THE RELATIVITY OF TIME

My former boss called this week just to catch up, have a few laughs and tell me a story about his oldest son.  Many a day when I worked for him he would share his frustration with his 5 year old's uncooperative spirit and scaredy cat approach to refusing to have his training wheels taken off his bike.  All his friends were riding two-wheeled, but not Dawson.  I would laugh and remind him that time usually takes care of those issues, and that I truly had never seen a normal kid in 4th grade still using training wheels.  Time had passed and my boss informed me that Dawson had finally ridden his bike with no training wheels.  They now couldn't get him off it!  Time's passage brought Dawson nearer and nearer to embracing the freedom of riding bike in a more grown up way.  Time is a constant mover.  It moves us closer to things we don't want to get to or have change, and yet at times seems to hold us at bay when we want it to move quickly towards things we desperately want.  It is relative.  It never changes and yet it appears to stop and go at its own discretion.  I can honestly remember being a kid of about 8 or 9 and feeling like I would ride the school bus forever - that I would never grow up.  Time was very relative to my 8 year old head, and it was slow.   Time passed and I eventually stopped riding the school bus and I did grow up (although that is somewhat subjective!).  I am finding though in my mid forties that again time is very relative.  Looking behind me I know that 45 years is simply 45 years no matter how you slice it.  It is 16,425 days and 394,200 hours mathematically.  When I look at it collaboratively it appears to have gone fast.  But when I look at individual slices of those years, some have seemed to stretch on similar to the years on the school bus.  Time is relative to where we are emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually.  It takes on different paces to us depending on where we are.  I watched the clock yesterday - it was Friday at work.  No matter how I wished and watched, the seconds which formed minutes, did not speed up. Why did time not realize I needed 5 p.m. to come which starts the magic of Saturday and Sunday?  When my daughter started kindergarten I remember in my heart trying to hold the second hand back - willing time to not move - not wanting time to take her away.  I find myself still at times willing time not to move, for age not to come, for the second hand to pause.  It seems I got off the bus only to wish now that time would slow down.