Timely

This is the time of year when I wish I could stop time.  

I’d like to have it be around 3:30 in the afternoon on a sunny Friday in July for about a month.  It might be hard to get to sleep, but I’d take that trade for being able to go swimming or take a nap—or both!—any time I wanted for the next four weeks or so.

But how would I know how long that was?

Trust me; I’d figure it out if I had the chance.

During the school year, I often wish I could fast-forward time.  Come Monday morning, I fantasize about leaping forward to Thursday night.  I’d forsake any delicious meals or successful social encounters that might have occurred during the week if only I could get through the hard parts without having to get through them.

Or would I?

Suppose you were given the following deal: You can either live to be 80, with all of life’s challenges and failures, or die at, say, 50, but that half-century would be all the best parts, all of the wheat, none of the chaff.  Would you take it?

Of course!  You’d be a sucker not to!

Am I kidding here or kidding myself?  Maybe.  

The thing about time is that there’s no escaping it.  No matter what you do, you have to take time to do it.  No matter how hard you try, you can’t finish before you started—and, in fact, you can’t even finish when you started; some amount of time has to be used up.

I just wish you could substitute those less appealing times for the more fun ones.  If I could use the time that I spend in an all-day all-employee retreat focusing on strategic planning for the time I spend lying on the beach by the Lake, that would be perfect, since the former seems to last forever, whereas the latter goes by in an instant.