David Addor, my timefull friend //
Over dinner the other night, my little sisters came to the shocking realization that I will be turning 25 in just a few months. As if their own 13 and 16 years were nothing to balk at. "25?!" they screeched (why can't girl's go through the voice-changing cycle like boys, by the way?). Where had time gone? //
Eventually, the conversation turned to the Historic Elitches Theatre, the most recent community-building, non-profit board-serving my parents have undertaken. The Elitches Theatre (located on Tennyson Street in Highlands) is raising money for a re-vamp by showing bi-weekly films featuring the "timeless" movies and characters of the past. As viewers sigh over the images of late, remembering the stars they can remember like their own Auntie Lee, many of them murmur, "Oh, to be timeless..." //
That statement got me thinking, though. Looking over my nearly-25 years of time, I have begun to think that I really don't want to be timeless. What does "timeless" mean, anyway? It means you stick in the ages, so to speak. You find that point, the ultimate plateau, and never rise past it. You are immortalized forever as that moment in which you were great, or horrible, but so utterly YOU that nothing was ever before it and nothing was ever after it. Timeless isn't human. //
Unless you're blue and in Avatar (please call me if you are), we're all human. So why strive to be timeless? Why not, much more sensically, embrace being timefull? //
I want to be timefull. I want to die so timefull that I don't have a grain of sand left in my soul. When I look at my nearly-25 years, I see so much time- and I feel grateful. My body, my mind, my surroundings, the things my eyes allow me to see- all are a testament of my time. My long nails? Time won against biting them. A casual walk to the store with my sisters? Time developing our relationship. The scar on my leg? That time I cheated in hide-and-seek and suffered immediate karma (I fell off a metal desk in off-limits land). My hesitation to commitment? That time called "2011" and the times when, even now, I miss an ex. //
What about my future? I invest in my Roth IRA so that I can have a timefull retirement. What about this blog? A testament to trail runs, sleep, and detox after a July timefull of parties. //
Why would I want to freeze? How could I ignore what's been melted? How dare I hope this moment never ends! Because I know that time-well-spent NOW illustrates time-well-spent YESTERDAY, and leads to time-well-spent SOON. Of course, time always brings woe. Yet hoping for timelesness only perpetuates the inability to deal with imperfection. So why not live timefully, in whatever way time presents? //
Cheers, to timefullness!
