Time Passes Anyway

Someone once told me that time passes chronologically, but we our lives are lived out of sequence.  I couldn't understand what that really meant.  But, I do know that things from 15 years ago feel like yesterday. And events from the other day sometimes feels so long ago, I can barely remember why it happened .  So how can we reconcile how we spend our lives when yesterday feels like it never happened, but our childhood is so tangible we can touch it?  And what does it even mean to live out of sequence?

Time is a really funny thing.  We spend, save, and even waste it like money.  We manage it, foolishly, as if it's something we can hang onto.  We ask for it to be quality time, whatever that is.  We plan our days around time, making sure that we are fully committed at every hour of the day; we even plan when to sleep.  We use it mark the segments in between life events.  Everything we do, and everything we don't do, it's almost always about time.

But time passes anyway, no matter what we do with ourselves.  The sun goes down, and then comes back again.  It's always done that since before we had life, and it will keep doing it long after we die.

I had lunch with someone today, an old, wonderful friend Marcelle, who I never see enough.  As we caught up, told stories of work stress, new puppies, promotions, therapy sessions, and hip thingies, both of us interjected questions proving that time is a social convention we can't even articulate.  Neither of us could remember when big important life event -like masters degrees or breakups- even happened.  But we knew they did.  Isn't that all that really matters anyway?   I can't tell you how old her brother is now, or when she finished graduate school, but we spent most of the time together today laughing like no time had even passed between us at all.  

It had me thinking that I now know what living out of sequence means, and I think it's not really about time at all.  The desire to measure our lives in bits and pieces is merely about managing the relationships we have with others.  Some are hugely important, like friends and family.  Some are necessary like our co-workers or bosses.  But time really only exists for us, so I know when to pick you up, or when to clock out.  It's important so I know how long it will take to get someplace, or when our beach trip is.  It matters only so I can quantify how I spend today.  The sequence doesn't matter, but rather, it's the value of our interactions.  That's why there are years of my adult life that almost don't exist in my memory.  

I can walk away from lunch today knowing that it's at least six months before I see my old wonderful friend again. But six months makes nearly no difference to me.  We'll find ten new things to talk about all over again.  We'll skip over the day to day, but it won't feel that way.  And it won't even matter.  The place that relationship has in my life will never be altered, it will never be weathered; it won't age, it won't diminish.  The sequence isn't logical, and it never can be.

Time just isn't real.  Only people are real.