The Grateful Vine

Right now is the youngest that you will ever be. 

And yet we are constantly ‘killing time’ – waiting for the weekend or sunny vacation, absorbed in our phones, distracted by our jobs, while time slips away. Until one day, we look in the mirror and wonder who that creased face is staring back at us. How did they get there? 

Meanwhile we somehow still haven’t gotten to where we thought we needed to be. And all while we thought that we had too much of the thing that we can never seem to balance. We still haven’t found the time to see that friend, phone that family member, pursue that passion. It’s always something for ‘later’.

When my dad died in a helicopter accident when I was 20, time stopped for me. I remember in the haze of the days, weeks and months afterwards: I was left perplexed about why people were still rushing about their busy lives when my world had halted. It felt like that cliche movie scene where the crowd is blurred out and sped up, rushing around a main character, frozen in the street in sharp, lonely focus. 

Grief steals your time – it stops it, slows it down and then it speeds it back up without warning. And you’re left reeling – feeling left behind. Wondering why the world has begun the race again. Because you never heard the starting gun go off.

But the reality is: time doesn’t wait for you. No matter how difficult life gets, there’s no breathers, no intervals and no coffee breaks. It’s a constant relay; passing the baton between different versions of yourself, until you cross the finish line. 

I think the first time that I realised my dad was his own person was about 4 months before he died. He rang me after he was rattled by a tragic helicopter accident that had happened at an air show that he had been at. A friend, peer and mentor of his had crashed after mis-timing a well practised aerial acrobatic display. It had cost him his life. In front of people that loved him – his wife, kids, friends, colleagues and admirers. It shook the helicopter community. It shook my dad; something I had rarely witnessed before. He spoke to me with regret and a new found reflection on the past that felt oddly disturbing. I felt for the first time that we connected as adults; him confiding in me as an equal and me seeing him as a vulnerable human with feelings rather than as the impenetrable parent. 

Little did I know that that time would be short lived. That fleeting moment of mutual discussion, just a passing conversation in the span of years of the endless words that I have since had without him. An almost forgotten moment to the black hole of the past. My brain clinging to the precious letters like sand, as they inevitably fall away into the chasm of time. 

Just as the photographs of him seem to, my memories blur and erode. When I look back on the news articles with the all too familiar pictures announcing the accident, 15 years on, his face is barely visible in the low resolution images of 2010. The pixilated features are an apt simile for my own fading memories. 

Time is forever something that is not fulfilled in our lives: we either have too much of it or not enough. It’s either taken for granted and wasted or treasured as our most valuable object after life altering events.

Just like wealth and power, there is no equality in time. Some people have lots of it while so many are time poor. Some have nannies, butlers, cleaners and teams of staff whilst they focus on their ‘lifestyle brand’ while others are working a day job, balancing a house and family and can barely scrape a weekend together to go camping with the kids. 

But time well spent doesn’t need to be about ticking off the to do list, achieving goals and constantly hustling. It shouldn’t be about how much we can fit into our already over stretched lives. It should be about the quieter moments in between. Like taking the long way home. Making some space for yourself. Time taken to listen to someone who needs to talk or simply sitting in silence with a grieving friend. The things that are always put off and pushed aside first in the pursuit of everything else. The people that we value the most are often the ones we give the least of our time to. 

We have so much time. Until we don’t. 

It’s a cruel and indiscriminate thing  – an infinite span – and we are only permitted to steal just a moment of it. 

So what will you do with your moment? Because right now is the youngest you will ever be.