Big Things

There’s a myth floating around among younger folks that time slows down with old age - that languishing on the porch swing watching the hours creep by somehow makes the days longer.    

I’m here today to refute this as untrue.  But then I’m not hanging out on the porch swing yet, either.  Nor do I envision a swing showing up (tangibly or metaphorically) in the near future.

In fact, in my experience time only continues to speed up, flying like a marathon sprinter that refuses rest stops.  Time just keeps on going, energizer-bunny style, until it runs out – which, we know, will eventually happen.  After all, time was created to measure the happenings in our created world, and we realize that eternity looms on either side of time’s beginning and end.

In my little corner of the world where time is racing (the minutes feel like grains of sand streaming through an hourglass), it seems there’s always more to do than there is time to do it.  Which is why I’m thinking for the ga-zillionth time (more intensely as personal time races through the senior era) about what matters and what doesn’t – specifically, what matters more than laundry and dirty dishes and the myriad of things that clamor for attention like so many wheels squeaking the loudest, crying for grease. 

There are categories for these things that matter, some of them more sophisticated than others.  But today I’m focused on things like Play Dough.  Puzzles.  My Little Ponies.  Follow the leader. Balloons. Classical Baby online.  Goldenbooks. Mac ‘n cheese.  Dancing to 60’s oldies. Backrubs. Discoveries. Adventures. Hugs. Small things that matter to small people, and thus become the biggest of all things that matter the most.