Stopping the Clock

Yesterday’s juicy flash blog topic combined with two earlier posts made to the class blog (kudos to Subversive-Lisa and TNLogan) really got me thinking about the precious, elusive element of time.

I’m one of those people who has too much on their plate. You know, that sicko who likes to be busy. The one who likes to fall in bed utterly exhausted at night because they’ve been running around like headless-poultry-on-speed for the majority of the day.

“You don’t get out enough,” one of my friends told me the other day.

I laughed in his face. Silly boy. Like I actually have time to get out and do things.

“You’re missing the world,” he said, "Stay and talk."

The mounds of homework on the top of my desk at home were screaming for attention. There were at least 6 emails that needed to be written, lines that needed to be memorized for the play, people I needed to call back.

But I stayed.

For the first time in a long while I ignored the things that were calling my name and demanding my attention and focused on something that was important in a different way, and, in a sense, maybe even more important. I stayed and had a wonderful conversation with a friend. And you know what? I still managed to finish all of that other pressing business.

At the risk of sounding Aesopian, the moral here, I guess, is that you can make time to do what you need to do.

Sometimes the most important things aren’t inside a textbook, or written in your planner, they’re the things that happen spontaneously, they’re friends and family, or a moments worth of introspection. They’re not the things that you have to do, they’re the things you take time to do.

They are the world.