Answers Found In The Garden

Discovering The Illusion of Time Lost

“The older you get, the faster time passes”. As a child, the words made no sense to me. What did grownups mean by that? The space between birthdays seemed like forever and adulthood was an eternity away. On sunny spring days, I longed to be outside feeling the warmth of the sun, not spending beautiful spring days sitting at a school desk, my eyes and attention quickly switching back and forth from window to wall clock. Five minutes was such a long time to wait for the final bell so I could race home to play in the garden. There were flower petals to gather for decorating mud cakes and heads of fluffy dandelion seeds to disperse with a huff and a puff. The entire world was filled with the sweet, fresh smell of spring.

I’m not sure at what age I succumbed to that grownup phrase. Life happened and years went by.  With a busy career, two children, and a household to manage, I found myself looking at the clock and begging for more time. I realized there were not enough hours in a day to accomplish everything on my list. Even my passion for gardening had limitations as I raced the clock – bending over at the waist, nose to the ground.  Breaks were rare as I tried not to waste any precious gardening time. When I did stand up and pause for a moment, my eyes focused on a weed to pull, a branch to prune, a plant to move, a slug to slay or something else needing immediate attention. Soon I found myself back in the “gardener’s position” trying to make the most of daylight hours. Time definitely seemed to be moving faster with each passing year. Many years and several gardens later, I wonder how I found time to accomplish all I did in my younger years.

I've now grown old enough to be counted among the elderly. Except for a few persistent aches and pains, I do not feel much different than I did as a young woman. But, I do realize that my outlook on life has undergone a major transformation. Is this the affect of time? Aging brings with it a new appreciation for life, a desire to move at a slower pace and an ability to let go of the mundane. It also brings a new perspective to things always taken for granted and a longing for answers. There is no better place to contemplate important matters than in my garden surrounded by nature’s beauty.

My latest quandary is whether or not time passes by more quickly as we age or whether time is even an entity. There are many sayings using time to explain away the unexplainable, but how realistic are they? We speak of saving it, running out of it, wasting it, using it wisely – or foolishly, losing it, and finding it. “Time will tell”, so it must not be able to keep a secret.  If it truly can heal all wounds, why do we have doctors and hospitals?  Time sounds like a tangible object, but it is not. I’ve never seen it, touched it or heard it.  Time cannot grow or shrink because it is only a measurement of an abstract concept. I'm beginning to feel a sense of understanding. I think my own unrealistic expectations and my reliance on clocks combine to form an illusion of time moving faster. I don’t look at the clock as often as when I sat waiting for the school bell to ring. The difference is not in the measurement of time, but in my own slower pace. I no longer rush around trying to beat the clock. Activities that consumed ten minutes on the clock when I was younger might now take an hour. I don’t look at the clock very often, so my mind perceives that ten minutes have passed, but the clock indicates it has been six times that amount. There seems to be a communication problem between my brain and the clock.

I don’t plan on ever picking up the pace again. I am content to meander along the garden paths, pausing to enjoy the beauty around me, feeling relaxed, creating pleasant new memories. Gone are the days when I watched the clock with anxious anticipation and gone is the time when I could not sit still because I saw something that needed to be pulled, pruned, supported, picked up, or tied back. I'm now going to savor the moment, no longer concerned with the illusion of time.