Time - friend or foe?

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." Albert Einstein

We went to Southern California for a week over Christmas break. There was barely time to breathe on our trip as we scheduled a full day of activities for each and every day we were down there. As we flew back home after 7 days of jam-packed adventures and fun it almost seemed as if we hadn't even gone. The week literally flew by.

I think of other times such as spending time with families as they wait for the outcome of life-saving or life-ending surgery for their loved one that has just been in an accident. Each minute seems like an eternity as the mind is flooded with what if's, cries to God, and feelings of helplessness.

How can a week go by like a blink of an eye in one context and in another seem like an eternity. Our constant adjustment to time points to, I believe, the fact that we weren't intended to be finite beings bound by time.

C.S. Lewis writes on this in Reflections on the Psalms:

We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.

Either situation, a seemingly fast week or a week of looking at the clock repeatedly, can be equally frustrating. If things are good or better yet, amazing, I can find myself almost fatalistically fixating on the fact that at some point the "vacation" will be over which prohibits me from fully embracing the moment and enjoying it for what it is. On the other hand, if things are creeping along at the pace of a colonoscopy I have no problem wallowing in the gravity of the moment and forget that time can also be merciful in that it never stops. I guess that recognizing each moment and honoring the time we have been given (no matter what our situation) might be a good start. To be content in all circumstances as Paul writes. Much easier said than done - I realize that. That is why it is all the more important to also realize that we are not alone in our "highs" and "lows." Others are out there experiencing the same struggle with time and either how fast it seems to be slipping away or how slow it seems to dragging by.

I'd write more but I have to go work out. One hour. Some of you are saying, "Is that all?" while I tend to think, "Wow that's a long time." See- it's all relative.