Beware, if you think you have all the time in the world.  You are afforded a very small slice of all the time in the world, and before you can blink they are shedding tears for your passing and heading toward the buffet table.

My grandmother, long gone, used to watch a soap opera called “The Days of Our Lives”.  I remember the name because the opening featured an hour glass with the sands rushing down it.   “Like sands through the hour glass,” intoned a sonorous actor’s voice, “so are the days of our lives.”  The miracle of the internet lets you click here and hear it for yourself.

The nostalgic sound of that clip can bring tears to a sentimental eye.  My mother, for example, would probably sob to hear it, reminded of her mother, newly retired and quickly hooked on the afternoon melodrama, reminded of being 37 herself when the show first aired.  She’d be thinking this seemingly ten minutes after being 37, suddenly 78, a 21 year battle with endometrial cancer behind her and not much happiness ahead.  “So are the days of our lives,” would have socked her in the kishkas, the music would have twisted the fist.

Since we do not have all the time in the world, how do we justify time wasted?   The days we accomplish little or nothing?   We can take some solace in the paycheck we’ve earned, if we’re working, or in a job well done, if we do a job well.   In the things we’ve created, a family, a nice home, a business, nice craft items.  In the progress we’ve made toward becoming kinder and smarter people, if we have made such progress.  

Or we can brood and set variations of our brooding into type, watch them march across a computer screen, tinker with the tipsy words, arranging them this way and that until we’ve made them coherent enough, post them on the internet for a guy in Eastern Europe to read.  Yes, we can also do that, I suppose.