Not enough time?

 I am impatient these days:  there is not time enough in this one llife.  I need more lives; I have made plans already for three or four.  I could easily expand to ten or twenty, all full-flavored, ardent, interesting.  Full of curiosity!  Looking into the sciences one after another, traveling to unexplored places, not only geographical, but psychological, social, economic; reading all the good books I do not yet know, and in all the languages; meeting every interesting human being then alive and with leisure — with leisure!– to know, to talk, to love, And to write!  Time to write, and having written, to rewrite.  I have enjoyed this earth; the only flaw is that my time here is too short.

David Grayson, "Under My Elm"

Ah, how true indeed, this passage from one of my favorite writers, the inestimable David Grayson, author of "Adventures in Contentment," Adventures in Friendship," and "The Friendly Road."  I first read his work almost 20 years ago after a very difficult period in my life when I was returning to some sense of normalcy with a new job and new apartment.   His moving words in those books transported me to a realm of peace and inner contentment I have never forgotten.  I can’t quite explain it as the effects of the books were so deeply personal.  

I can relate so much to what he says above.  I look at all my hundreds of unread books lining bookshelves and stacked on the floor and realize that I, too, would need more lives to accomplish all the reading I want to do.  Right now I have even less time than most people I know because when I am home from work all my time is taken up being on call or alert to my mother’s needs and wants  as her caregiver.   It never ends until bedtime at 10:15 or so.   After supper I may try to read a bit on the sofa in the living room, but my attention is quickly lost when I hear my name called yet again.   

So, I feel time is even more precious than ever now, especially since I have so little of it to devote purely to my books, for example.  And even if I did have more time, I sometimes wonder if I would be able to resolve to use that time in the best way possible.  Unfortunately, even late at night I am distracted by trivial things on the Internet or become lost in surfing and skimming numerous articles, most of which I forget as soon as I have read them.

And, like the author, I think of all the traveling I could do and all the interesting people I could meet if I wanted to on those travels.    But who can even think of the future, really?   At my age now, I often find myself marveling at all I have packed into this life I have lived thus far.  I have been blessed to have had a number of interesting jobs at which I  have met  and known some of the most fascinating and interesting people.   True, the time I knew them was short, but I remember and think about them even today, 30 or 40 years later.  I guess this is the kind of thing one contemplates after a certain age and when retirement is for the first time realistically possible.    

The encouraging thing for me is to realize that I am still as vitally curious about life and people as ever.   I don’t foresee this ever changing.  As a former journalist and teacher, and now as a writer and photographer in my spare time, I have always been interested in learning, writing about what I have learned, and photographing the world around me.   The hundreds of interviews I conducted during my newspaper days which ended in 1991 — those alone constituted an education in and of itself.   The half dozen solo round trips by car across the country.   The years spent in graduate school.   Life is an endless series of learning opportunities, and never more than today in my current job which involves delving into so much information by way of the computer and digital technology that has so rapidly changing our world in the last decade or two.   I can truly say that I am swamped with unending opportunities to learn each day.  Thus,  I should be content with whatever I can learn, savor,  and enjoy in the days I have left,  and which now pass so rapidly.  But, like David Grayson, I feel time is short, especially since I have already lived, what to me has been a good  long life already.