time
Time sure has a way of sneaking up on you, dragging on, or flying by. Some days you wish it would speed up and other days you look back and have no idea where it went. I think Ferris Bueller said it best — “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
We choose dates, occasions, events, and moments to mark time. We have anniversaries to commemorate and celebrate first kisses, first dates, weddings. We celebrate birthdays to mark aging, gracefully, and maturity, theoretically. Do you remember the pure joy of your birthday when you were eight or nine years old — the planning that came with your birthday party? What would you do? Have a magician? Backyard party? Scavenger Hunt? Baseball? Go somewhere cool, like a candy factory? After that was determined — who would you invite, what kind of cake would you have? Each of these decisions sprouted seeds of excitement, leading up to this day that you were celebrated and spending that day with your closest friends.
Then time goes by, and birthdays change. College happens and your questions revolve around beer or margaritas. You graduate and maybe birthdays turn into trips, opportunities to see something new. But something funny happens as we get older; we care less. We lose that childhood excitement of the planning, the cake, spending time with our people. It’s a perfect metaphor for life and time passing as we grow up. We get busy, we focus so much on surviving, building a career, getting married, buying a house, and having kids that all of a sudden, years pass and you’re nearly ten years out of college.
Sometimes though, anniversaries are born out of hardship — a difficult memory or a moment in time that redefined your trajectory. I celebrate one of those annually; an event that happened to me that fundamentally changed who I am, and who I would become. Over nine years, that date has evolved in really interesting ways. I’ve gone through the stages of grief, anger, resentment; I’ve also gone through confident stages of being a survivor, being tough, being strong, but also being graceful through it. This, my nine year anniversary, was maybe the clearest I’ve ever viewed it. I was all of those things; still grieving, still angry (at times), occasionally resentful it happened to me, but I’m also tough and strong, and have found a grace that let me remain human, remain vulnerable, remain open to growth.
That grace, and time, have shown me how to actually celebrate that anniversary. How to take time and use it to my advantage. To see the growth that’s come from nine years. To lean into the vulnerability that can be such an uncomfortable place. Vulnerability asks us to feel everything, the good and the bad. To learn to view it and accept it, and if you’re lucky and strong-willed enough, to start growing from it. To shift how you view the world; to choose what lens you want to see the world. To seek that excitement of a child planning their birthday to commemorate time. To find the joy in the small elements that add up to anniversaries full of meaning, of love, and ultimately, of hope. Somehow I’ve blinked and nine years have flown by. Looking around now, I love to choose that excitement of planning a celebration, the joy of thinking about family, friends, and cake, but mostly of time, and the time I still have.
