On September 20, three times I was confronted with the nature and value of time. I am very task oriented and so I keenly feel the passing of time.
In my first of these three episodes I was in a barber shop. I walked in the shop at 5:09 p.m. I could tell the old man in the chair was nearly done. The bib around his neck was loose. The tissue under the bib was removed. I expected him to be gone in one minute. It took ten. The FBI would have called that a clue. I should have realized I was in for the long haul.
Then a young black man got in the chair. His face and beard were sculpted to precision. Pointy sideburns. Pencil thin moustache. And, a vainly designed goatee. Had I truly loved myself this would have served as my second clue to depart and return later.
But, I figured, I was here already. Leaving and returning would empty a second pocket of time. Thirty minutes to come and go. If I could be patient this would end shortly and I'd not have to worry about it for another month. Most haircuts are 15 to 20 minutes. What is this prima donna gonna be? Thirty? Try fifty-nine minutes.
At fifty minutes I excused myself, feeling angry and downright stupid. The barber who promised me over forty-five minutes earlier that this would only take a minute pleaded with me to be patient five more minutes. Ten minutes later I was in the chair.
I am yet a newly-wed and these slow, unfocused minutes had a drag and an excessive weight. In my hour and a half with these men I found time imitating the movement of water through a swamp choked in marsh grass.
My second encounter with time came as I watched TV with Joy, my bride. She got up to get us some ice cream. I paused the DVD to her protests that she’d just be a “skinny minute.” For four months I’ve been with her nearly every day and I’ve found none of her minutes to be anorexic.
I’ve come to admire how she floats from episode to episode in her life with scant awareness of the passage of time. For Joy time is a garment misplaced somewhere in the back of her closet.
I’m not suggesting she transcends time. Like everyone else she is either on time or late for work. She loves in time. Communicates in time. Works in time. She simply is not shackled by a false urgency. I like it because I need a bit of that to balance my own addiction to schedules and urgencies.
My third encounter came the next morning as I read September 22 from a daily recovery devotional – Touchstone, by Hazelden.
Time never challenged the Indian or worked against him.
Time was silently marking the passage of the seasons.
It was a thing to be enjoyed.
This day’s entry focused on freeing oneself from the “to-do” list. It also encouraged the reader to practice becoming a human “being” rather than a human “doing.”
So, by observing the movement of time in the barber shop and by observing my wife move through time as if it were breeze under the wings of her glider I became open to a better understanding of the nature and value of time. It was so coincidental, maybe providentially coincidental, that I found the daily devotional covering the subject of time.
Today, rather than wrestle with time, I will try to be aware of the experience of time and let it flow.
Louis Templeman
