Time

Have you ever wondered how your life would be different if you had just done one thing different in your life? Seconds, minutes, hours — all affect the outcome of our life’s journey.

This reminds me of the theorized Butterfly Effect — “the sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.”  Have you heard of it?  In laymen’s terms, it means that, according to the theory, the flap of a butterfly’s wings could possibly affect a hurricane (for example).

A few years ago, a friend of mine, who I hadn’t seen for many years because of how I mistreated our friendship when I had less wisdom, came to visit us in Seattle and brought a gift for me — a symbol of time lost and a renewed friendship.

Time – the word always brings up different songs in my head …

There’s the song I learned at Camp Tiyalaka — Ally Ally Oxen Free … (the video has an ad to begin with but you can skip it)

The lyrics go like this: Time to let the rain fall without the help of man. Time to let the trees grow tall. Now, if they only can.  Time to let our children live in a land that’s free. Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free.

Time to blow the smoke away and look at the sky above. Time to let our friends know we’d like to begin again.  Time to send a message across the land and sea. Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free.

Strong and weak, mild and meek, no more hide and seek. Time to see the fairness of a children’s game. Time for men to stop and learn to do the same. Time to make our minds up, if the world at last will be. Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free.

Or … the old Jim Croce song called Time In A Bottle in which part of the lyrics say “But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them …”

And of course, there’s the old saying …

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time for war and a time for peace.”  Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

I’m sure you have your own “time” memories …

So, what brought this thought process on, you ask?

The gifted clock has stopped — never to tick again. It had stopped before because of a loose wire, was fixed, but this time it simply died.

And so, the memories of the clock, which stood prominently on display in our family room for so many years, will soon be forgotten as it’s laid to rest. Or will they? We tend to keep “things” for memories but in reality those memories are embedded deep within us with only time or dementia to erase them.

Either way, we welcome new memories in the form of a new Frank Lloyd Wright clock.