They say Christmas is a peaceful time. Sometimes I feel it, but not often. Again this year, I wonder when – when will there be peace, real peace, on this planet?
Closer to home, there may be anxiety about Christmas visitors, travel and winter weather, and family dynamics. Far too many people face the worry of not having money for gifts, or a Christmas dinner, or even a place to live. And, if you are like me, you might catch yourself saying, “I don’t have enough time to finish everything on my list.”
But then I remember what my friend Sassi told me one Christmas years ago. It was December 23rd. With a long list of errands, I started my day at the office, tying up year end, before setting off to Sassi’s place for our Christmas lunch, probably soup, her specialty. We exchanged gifts, but the best gift was her parting message: “Remember, you have all the time in the world!”
All the time in the world? Really? On December 23rd? But, I realized, I didn’t actually need to stop at the hardware store. Whatever my husband thought needed fixed could wait. He wouldn’t get to fixing, until well after Christmas anyway. Instead I went straight to the mall. I had a gift to deliver to a friend who worked there. When I arrived, she was just going on break. That perfectly timed fifteen minutes was exactly enough.
Then I zipped around, doing the last of the Christmas shopping, before heading to the grocery store. You know how the grocery store is right before a holiday. The aisles are crowded. People are in a rush, wild eyed. But don’t you know, they still want to chat, offering Christmas wishes.
As I grabbed one of the few remaining carts, I remembered Sassi’s words. I took my time, found what I needed, and stopped, of course, to wish friends and neighbours a Merry Christmas. At the check out, the woman ahead of me exclaimed, “I’ve been here for two hours!” I glanced at my watch. I’d been there half an hour, only half an hour! It was as if time had expanded. All the time in the world, just as Sassi promised.
Time is a relative thing, long hours and short years. I have a little book called Unwinding the Clock, by Bodil Jonsson, a Swedish physicist. She made me laugh at what she said about how women deal with time. “How many ‘soons’ are there in a quarter of an hour?” When my kids were little, I’d set a timer, one of the old wind up ones, that tick, tick, ticked as the minutes passed, until the loud “ding” that said it was time — time for the end of their time out, or the end of their turn with a favourite toy. That was clock time, precisely measured.
Sometimes one minute seems like forever, and other times you wish that one minute really was forever. In the hours and days you spend at someone’s bedside, when you count the breaths, or the seconds between breaths, all the years you’ve had with that person are never enough.
Or the long days spent waiting for Christmas, when you are seven, and the forever long night of Christmas Eve, which for the adults is never long enough. The long wait to grow up, that never seems to come, and then suddenly you are there, adult, and scared to death because somehow you still feel like you are only five?
We divide our time, try to save time, wish the time was over, wish for more time. Bodil Jonsson says that time is the only currency we really have. We spend time, we waste time, we budget our time. She says to think of time as going into a wallet, a wallet with four pockets. One pocket is for money, one is for relationships, one is for the things around us, the natural world, our tasks, and the fourth pocket is for our inner world.
How much time have you spent making money? That’s time put into the money pocket. We put our time into the money pocket and think we will get it back when we retire. But we all know someone who didn’t make it to retirement, all the time that went into their money pocket, gone. How many people lie in their death beds wishing they had put more time into the money pocket?
More often, people regret not putting enough time into the relationship pocket. Have you ever wished for more time with your loved ones, to ask the questions that seem important now, that you never thought to ask your grandmother when she was still there, time to understand and know loved ones differently? That is time we cannot buy back, with any amount of money.
We wait and wait, counting long days, and then, the day is here, suddenly. That day we have been waiting for is here, and gone. In the season of Advent, we wait for the coming of a baby, born centuries ago. We wait in anticipation for Christmas, a day that comes every year.
If we indeed have four pockets in the time wallet, for money, for people, and for every day tasks, let’s not forget the pocket for our inner world, our spiritual selves, our heart, our inner peace. One of these days, just like it will suddenly be Christmas, one of these days, it will suddenly be the beginning of the next segment of this amazing journey called Life.
You have all the time in the world, you know. So take a breath, breathe, sit by the fire, or enjoy a winter walk. Talk to the moon in the early morning. Speak to the Blue Jay and the Willow Tree. Dance in December rain, and find a moment’s peace. Let it expand to fill your heart, and smile. You have all the time in the world.
[Note, a sad note – my dear friend Sassi left us for the Spirit World in May 2023. In a way that tells us that there isn’t REALLY all the time in the world. But Sassi is the sort of friend who finds ways to drop into our lives from wherever she is, sometimes MORE present in spirit form than in the physical. I can hear her giggle as I write this.]
Dream Bringer’s Studio 