Time for everything

Peter Bate

When I was a kid, time seemed to stand still. The six-week school holidays yawned and stretched in front of me. Birthdays took an age to arrive and my early teenage years were like a lifetime. I’m not sure when things suddenly sped up.

Now days, weeks, months and years seem to hurtle by, and time is like a just-caught fish, frantically wriggling to get away. Now I wish I had a chance to get bored. There’s so much to do, so much choice. When I do get a few minutes spare, it’s too tiring to decide how to fill them. Do I watch one of the dozen programmes I’ve stored on my recently acquired TV hard-drive? Listen to one of the 4,664 songs I’ve got on my ipod? Read one of the three books I’ve got on the go? Clean the house? Go for a walk? Ring a friend I’ve not spoken to for ages? Put on the guitar strings I bought two months ago? Too many options can paralyse.

And why can’t I do one thing at a time? Why do my fingers twitch for the TV remote when I’m bathing my three-month old son in the back room? Are his smiles and splashes not enough to entertain me for just 10 minutes?

As I write this, I’m listening to a CD, the bright music battling against the whirr of the dishwasher and spin of the washing machine. And dinner’s in the oven. But is this really how it’s meant to be? All the time?

The bible says there’s a time for everything. It doesn’t say everything has to be done at the same time.

Time

There is time for everything:

Time to create and time to demolish the set in stone,

Time to cling on for dear life and time to release,

Time to sing lullabies and time to set boundaries,

Time to walk in dawn-awed silence and time to street-dance, drunk on everyday splendour.

There is time to shriek the battle cry and time to lay down arms,

Time to inspire and time to quietly dig for treasure buried in the everyday grey,

Time to regroup and time to withdraw,

Time to find the gap and hide and wait. For the whisper.

Time to bend double and time to gaze into ancient eyes, warm with all-seeing love,

There is always time.