Time

“’This is the first time I’ve known what time it was, since I left the Sherstons’ house.’ Bree was ignoring both Mrs. Bug’s raptures and the instrument in her hands. I saw her meet Roger’s eyes, and smile—and after a moment, his own lopsided smile in return. How long had it been for him?

Everyone was squinting at the setting sun, waving clouds of gnats from their eyes and discussing when they had last known the time. How very odd, I thought, with some amusement. Why this preoccupation with measuring time? And yet I had it too.

…

I laid my hand on his, where it rested on the box. His skin was warm with work and the heat of the day, and he smelt of clean sweat. The hairs on his forearms shone red and gold in the sun, and I understood well just then, why it is that men measure time. They wish to fix a moment, in the vain hope that so doing will keep it from departing.”

~from The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon

Last Saturday, I visited the Museum of Science and Industry with my friend Shannon. One of the highlights of the visit was meeting Kate, the “museum roommate.” Kate won the Month at the Museum contest, and has been living at the museum for almost 30 days now. She’s had unprecedented access to all areas of the museum, gone on fantastic trips around the city to make appearances, and met some remarkable people, including astronaut Jim Lovell. I’m sure it has been an amazing experience. I’m insanely jealous.

But some part of me has felt bad for her over the last few days, too. Her blog posts and videos have started to frequently mention how close she is to the end of the month. When I think about how I would feel if I were in her shoes, my heart aches in sympathy. I’m sure I would be a total mess.

You see, I’m afraid of endings. At least, I’m afraid of endings of good things. I don’t just dislike them. They tend to send me into a spiral of obsessive panic, and here’s why: I can’t stop them from coming. No matter what I do, I can’t stop time. I can’t even slow it down. It just keeps passing, whether I am ready or not. The ending always comes. Time is one force that I simply cannot control.

I know that the mysterious and unstoppable nature of time is just a fact of life. That hasn’t stopped me from trying to find ways to control it. For many, many years, every time I saw the end of a good thing coming, I did anything I could to make it seem farther away. When good things did end, I did anything I could to pretend otherwise.

This play I am in is over? I think I’ll protest when they try to strike the set. I’m graduating high school? I’ll come back in the fall to help with band camp. I got a job in Chicago? Yes, but I’m only going to keep it for a year – then I’ll be back!

Obviously, they took down the set of my senior play, I did eventually go to college, and although I did give up my first Chicago job after a year, I did not move back to Michigan. The endings all came, and they were permanent, despite my protests.

In the past few years, I’ve come to better terms with the reality of endings. I know they will come, and I try to deal with it as best I can. Instead of pathetic attempts to pause, slow down, or reverse time, I instead try to make the most of the time I have. My mission in life now is to live in a way that always makes me feel like I’ve done the best I can. It sounds like a good and healthy thing, but sometimes it leads to its own brand of worries.

I live in constant fear of regret. My goal is to feel like I’ve taken every opportunity that’s available to me and made the most of all of them, and quite honestly – I never feel that way. For example, I’ve followed museum roommate Kate through her blog, and wondered every day if I should have applied for the job. It would have meant risking my real-life job. I had enough vacation, but we had a ton of work this month and they might have hired someone to replace me if I had requested 30 days off. Yet some part of me whispers, “There would have been other jobs, but that experience would have been once in a lifetime.”

This same obsessive compulsion is also what drove me to study abroad, go to graduate school, apply to the Peace Corps, and run the marathon. There’s always something bigger and better I feel like I should be doing. It is all an attempt to escape the fear that someday, I will look back at my 20s and wonder why I wasted them going to a 9-to-5 job. When I read friends’ newsfeeds on Facebook, and I see them teaching in China and Uganda or touring the world on a cruise ship, I feel like I am probably not making the most of my life. And the worst part of it is that there are no do-overs. Not only is time unstoppable, there is no rewind.

But there is one thing that I try to keep in mind when I get into a panic over this: no matter how much I do, there will always be something bigger, better, braver, and more amazing that I could have done. Even when I have taken the big, risky opportunities, I often look back and wonder if I made the very best of them. Like I said earlier, if I were museum roommate Kate right now, I’d be in a frenzy, trying to make sure my last few days were everything they possibly could be.

After a lot of reflection, I’ve come to realize that there is only one thing I could regret forever, and that is doing nothing. I may not always be seizing every day for its extreme potential, but as long as I am spending my days working a job I love, getting out into the community to do some volunteer work I enjoy, and spending time with people who make me happy, I don’t believe I will look back with any great regrets. I don’t have to do everything. I just have to do something.

It’s easier to say all that than to make myself really believe it, of course. But as I sit in my quiet apartment right now, listening to the ticking clock mark the passing time, it feels like the truth. I can’t go back and take opportunities I missed, but time will continue to pass, and there will be more opportunities tomorrow.