Never Wish for Less Time and Other Lessons for 2024
2024-01-15 Invite Champions Weekly
I redlined out of the alternate universe.
It was one of the perfect Texas winter days. 73 degrees, windows down, a lazy hawk looping the highway on a perfect blue canvas. Down below, my coupe interface blinked something new at me. I glanced at the dash and realized I was going way too fast.
Wow. I thought, why I am driving so fast?
I realized speed was the fix I needed from the pace of the past six days.
The alternate universe is the name my sister and I have given the home of my elderly dad and stepmom, where time both simultaneously crawls and accelerates.
I guess you could say my dad is “dying,” whatever that means. But it’s not like he lay prone, waiting. He’s not that kind of person. He and I were walking big box aisles just this morning, working on home improvement. He’s been aware of his own mortality at least since he began reporting KIAs up the chain in Saigon in 66, probably before. His sense of life and death drove him from the rice patties to seminary and then to the local church and then to the hospital wards, caring for old veterans.
His clear-eyed view of life and death has informed my own calling and ministry. As a high school senior, I met one of his ward veterans. The old man he introduced me to had been a gunner on the western front in 1918.
Time is a weird thing.
Now my Dad is old. My sisters and I are currently rotating home care, which is completely unsustainable. This week, as I cooked three square and handled KP, ran him and his wife to the hospital twice a day, and retrofitted their home with old people stuff, I was fully aware of the minutes ticking away. I wished for more time.
Billy Oppenheimer tells the story of when singer John Mayer realized he had the wrong attitude about time. Oppenheimer reports that John used to just wait for things to be over. But one day it dawned on him that everything moves at the same speed. The things you hate and the things you love. It led Mayer to implement a new rule in his life:
Never wish for less time.
Never wish for less time.
Oppenheimer notes that one of the most remarkable neurological findings of the last century is that the brain processes pleasure and pain at the same pace. Either way, in our moments of joy and our moments of sorrow, life continues apace.
Further, in either case, the mind seeks homoestasis—a restoration of balance. As Oppenheimer writes, “pain and pleasure, good days and bad days, the things you’re dreading and the things you’re looking forward to—everything leaves at the same speed.”
We spend our moments wanting more time or less time, yet life continues apace. I suppose that as I sped down the Texas interstate, I was unconsciously trying to counterweight the weird sense of time in the alternate universe of my dad’s final chapter. I made myself a new challenge: instead of wishing to change time, learn to fully live in every moment.
Every Moment Can Be Redeemed (Used for a Purpose)
Learning to fully live in the time you’re in—your moments of both the pleasure and pain—is one of the great tricks of life.
My sophomore son says he can’t wait for wrestling to be over. I asked him why he signed up again after his freshman year. He said he doesn’t know why, which is a legitimate answer. Often, we don’t know why we do what we do.
But here’s the thing. If you don’t like what you are doing, you have two options, both of which are better than complaining about time:
Stop doing what you are doing.
Develop an understanding of why you do what you do.
I told my son that I hate doing/managing dirty dishes. But I no longer complain about it, because I enjoy cooking and I enjoy table time with our family. Dishes are simply an unfortunate part of a worthy goal.
How we think of time begs the question, what do you want?
Then - if we know what we want, the question becomes, what are the necessary activities that help you reach your goals?
Every Moment Can Be Holy
Understanding your moment is also, at least to some degree, the definition of what it means to be holy. As the Hebrew prepare to leave Egypt, God says, “Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether human or animal.” (Exodus 13:2)
We tend to think of “consecration” as a religious ritual. Some know that the word consecrate (Hebrew: qadash) means to “make holy”, or “set apart.”
Consider another way of thinking about what God was saying to the Hebrews. Qadash has an etymological root tied to preservation and permanence. It signifies something that is unalterable. In other words, kept in original condition, and not worn down by use over time.
We are used to a world in which things fall apart. Our favorite things break. Loved ones age.
The opposite of qadash, halal, means “to pierce” - think of it as to use up until it is worn down or used up. This is how we the world of sin works—a transaction, something we buy and then use up and discard. A treasure that eventually becomes trash. An expiration date. Even our relationships become temporary. In this understanding, to sin is to adopt a “use and discard” mind. To selfishly take something for our own consumption, to pierce a thing through until it is trash.
In Telos, Leonard Sweet and I write extensively about the relationship of time and heaven. Heaven is the presence of God, and in God’s presence, time is full—past, present and future all co-exist.
Imagine if things did not fall apart, and they were as beautiful in the end as the day you first held them. A favorite article of clothing that never frays or loses its shape. A meticulously prepared home in which the garden and the decorations do not decay and rot. A marriage relationship as beautiful as the moment two people fall in love. A father-son relationship when the remaining moments left aren’t inverse to the desire to be together. This is the world of God’s Garden, in which the lack of sin creates no decay.
When we are slaves to the world, time is a useless commodity. But in God’s world, time becomes full. It is used for a purpose. But that means we have to know how to redeem it. For the first time, the Hebrews were about to be free. With it comes some tasks, such as learning to learning to manage what they really want.
In this light, to consecrate or to make holy is to turn our mindset of trash into a mindset of treasure. It is to remember. To live in the moment. To enter an alternate universe where time folds up. All things become sacred and beautiful, treasures to preserve and care for, people to love and to whom we bind ourselves.
As you consider the ways you spend your time this year, I encourage you to do a few things:
never wish for less time
think about what you want
accept the hard assignments next to the easy ones
recognize the power of the present moment
thank the Lord for every holy moment, both pleasurable and painful
