The View When Lying on the Ground

I closed my eyes on the couch, so tired and wondering what would face me after my next arrival at home in Texas. Just a short nap, as my lids shut on the blanched wine-red walls of the living room...

And suddenly I saw green. I had opened my eyes, looking straight-ahead into lush grass - I was lying not on the couch but on the ground... at the family cemetary at the very spot where I will someday join my family. Yet to reflect on this new view, I saw two sets of legs moving in my direction; one set in business grey slacks and dress black shoes, the other in a smart black skirt and black high heels. This young couple leaned down directly in front of me and cradled my head in their arms together. My mother and father had come to help me, now eternally young and strong, and resolved as masters of this whole situation. I felt their smiles and joy.

"You can get up and take care of all of this - it is not yet your time to be here. And we are always with you supporting you, as we always told you all your life."

I saw wine-red again and remained frozen on the couch, trying to return to that reunion cut so short. Yet they were still with me - and still are - as I drink the red wine and look forward to the lush green grass of eternal strength in the source of all life.

Busy? Who isn't....

The famous Astronomical Clock in the main square in Prague, Czech Republic. I took this foto because I took the time to travel to Prague a week ago.

The past hundred years have seen the invention and implimentation of many labour-saving appliances and devices. Cars speed our journeys, kitchen appliances making cooking really fast, washing machines and dryers make doing the wash a marginal activity, and computers and the internet make communication virtually effortless.

So what do we do with all this spare time? Perhaps I ask the wrong question. Why do we forget what we originally wanted to do with more time? Time is the most precious commodity, because we only have it once. We can make more money, but once a day is gone, it never comes back.

I've entered a phase of life in which I remain lastingly disappointed with how most of us deal with time. How many emails can you respond to, how many text messages, how many mobile phone calls that bombard you hourly? Looking back over the past few years, do you simply see a goulash of time diced up into tiny pieces for so many different people/causes, that there is no pattern or common thread to the whole matter? You can replace all material things, but time never returns, and often you have one opportunity to help someone at one specific time. If you let the time slip, you've lost that one chance.