The value of time

Time runs fast. Already the fact of having to write the next article for New Project, while it seems to me that I have just finished last month's one, or the fact of thinking about my age, makes me aware of this fast run. So? Get sad? Because?

There is only the present moment, the one in which I can love, which is the only thing that really matters. There is no single way to love and time, even if it runs fast, is a sower of the possibility of love. It is worth living it, without regretting yesterday's weather, whether it was good or bad, useful or lost time, and without imagining a future I don't own. Everything that has happened in recent years and what is looming today teaches us to seek what is essential, what is possible and what is worth waiting for. Waiting is, or at least it can be, the possibility of creating a space of true life in us. Waiting is a time of growth, if our expectation is aimed at what life brings; it can be a friend or a success in work, a feeling that is a sower of beauty or many other things that the Creator has given us to sow on earth and that teaches us to wait to reap the fruits.

In the book of Qoeleth we talk a lot about letting ourselves be carried away by the wind, a symbol of the vanity and inconsistency of many things that seem important to us, to say how many of our concerns can be without any solidity; other biblical authors take up the image to call the people to take responsibility for the time they live. A father of the Church, a monk, to invite to be faithful to prayer in the solitude of the cell, condemns those who come out to "go and feed the wind"! What do we do, what do we want to do, what do we want to own time for?

Is wasting time always something negative? Maybe we need it to give space to the birth of thoughts and feelings that do not arise from what we can organize or decide. The apparent emptiness is perhaps the place of a land that awaits the sprouting of the first sprouts, of seeds not sown, of a novelty that opens up a new path.

Waiting for a person, perhaps very late, can generate a strong nervousness, but it can also be an opportunity to reflect on topics that escape us due to the speed with which we live or prepare the heart for an encounter to another level.
Even a red light can be an opportunity for a quick thought of God, for an invocation, a praise, a plea ... or simply for a relaxing breath.
Time is a gift not to be wasted, but effectiveness, productivity and exploitation are not always the best way to manage it, to take advantage of the gift or to be grateful to the donor. To take up the image of the prophets, the wind can be an inconsistent breath, which empties and disperses, or it can become that which fecundates, which allows the seeds to fly to implant and the pollens to ensure that the flowers can become fruit, at the sails to inflate and carry the boats across the vastness of the sea. Grazing the wind is an image of an escape from real responsibilities, but grasping the wind to create clean energy is a service to humanity. All this teaches us that, if we grasp the sense of being victims of history, events, work or our forces, it is perhaps possible to live otherwise what defeats or contradicts us.

Wisdom is not made up of quantities and things, but of how we welcome the life that comes our way. Even with God, the God who comes, we can wait for him as the executioner, as the judge or as Mercy.
God does not change; it is we who, while waiting, change the image of him written in our hearts.


Cesare Falletti
NP May 2022