"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute." - Albert Einstein
Doing my "bicycle exercises" is definitely helping the health of my legs, the same legs that now feel like rubber. The burn in my muscles lets me know I am making progress. The other day, from my vantage point on the floor, I was certain I had been peddling away for hours. Laying on my exercise mat, I glanced over at the clock. Surely I had made progress and was inching to the two-minute mark.
Nope. I hadn't even completed one minute of peddling.
Ugh!!! I persevered. I looked back at the clock, and I was still under a minute. Now the fighter in me kicked in - I would complete a full minute of these exercises, even if it killed me. The clock ticked slowly, and as I finally hit my minute mark, I felt good that I made it. Going into my next set of floor exercises, I started thinking about how long a minute is. We use the term "Zero to Sixty" so frequently, but in all honesty, sometimes a minute feels like an eternity. Sixty seconds can be the longest time span ever.
Time is odd. Songs, poems and memes have been written on the value of time, but we don't really seem to comprehend what it really means until we are running late for class or are stuck in traffic on our way to the airport. One minute going by too quickly can be disastrous. You miss your connecting flight by a minute, and you have to jump through hoops to get to your destination. A minute late at school can cost 15 minutes of detention. A minute late getting to the hospital can cost one witnessing a birth or bidding a tearful good-bye.
I don't usually put much thought in minutes, just their cumulative add-up, turning into hours, days, weeks, months and years. But that moment that I was on the floor exercising has really made me think—and value—the little chunks of time that add up to a lifetime.
As a military mom and spouse, I can't tell you how fast time goes when we prep for Temporary Duty (TDY) or deployment. The days and weeks flash by in what seems like seconds. And yet, during deployment, the time drags on forever, or so it seems.
When my babies were sick, it seemed that the nights dragged on forever. Every minute a fever inched higher, the minutes waiting for the pediatrician to call back seemed like hours.
Any time I have had to deliver a three-minute speech, it felt more like I was standing for three hours. Yet those same three minutes go by way too quickly when putting a pan on the stove and turning the burner on high.
Except for when I exercise, I can truly see how fast time does fly. I see it in my children and grandchildren. Flipping through photos is a great way to see how quickly minutes add up to a lifetime. Looking at my to-do list, I also see how fast the minutes turn into days and then weeks, and I still haven't completed my list.
Our youngest child will enter her senior year of high school this fall. We have started the process of discussing ACTs and SATs, colleges, taking senior photos, talking scholarships—you name it—the usual "from junior-to-senior" chats. Most days, the conversations feel routine. After all, she is the fourth child, so these talks aren't the first we've had in our family. But, wow, the reality of these talks being our last set of junior-to-senior transitional chats seems surreal.
The concept of time really hit me the other day, as my baby was driving to work, and I sat shotgun. On our way, we passed a little girl who was sitting on her front porch, wearing a princess dress and a tiara, busy blowing bubbles on a sunny spring day.
"Aw, look how cute she is! I remember you guys dressing up," I commiserated. I am quite sure my daughter doesn't miss those days as much as I—yet, anyway.
At that point, I realized how fast my minutes were going. Time, really, is going that fast. Our last child in high school, thirty-plus years of marriage—how did we get here already? Can minutes add up to years that quickly?
Oh yes, they sure can. Anything that is good seems to go by too fast. Those great minutes add up to wonderful years in no time flat.
And for that, I am blessed.
© Lynne Cobb - 2014
Lynne is a wife, mom, Mema, and a published writer. See what else she has to say on her blog.