PEA RIDGE — When I was 10 years old in 1950, I had the thought, “You know, if I can live to be 60, I’ll be able to see the turn of the century!” At the time, deep into my fifth-grade year in school at Pea Ridge, the turn of the century felt so far away, so long to wait! On the other hand, here I was in the fifth grade, almost halfway through school! How quickly my childhood was slipping away!
There is this strange thing about the passing of time. When we are looking forward to something with relish and anticipation, time seems to move so slowly. When we look back on times past, it seems as though the years rushed by, disappearing in a flash and we wonder where the time has gone? Time does get away. We boys who at 10 years old thought it was taking us forever to reach 18, suddenly turn around and find that we are 70 and counting! Yes, we’ve been busy, raising families, holding down jobs, pursuing dreams, enjoying some successes and some failures;
but where has all the time gone?
I remember that when I was a senior in high school in 1957, Mrs. Howard, our principal’s wife, and also one of our teachers, said to me, “Jerry, from this point on, your life will begin to move faster!” I didn’t think much of it at the time, butshe was right. Although it took me almost 50 years to reach 18, when I eventually found myself experiencing the turn of the century I looked back and it felt like only 10 years ago that I was a 10-year-old, thinking how many, many years it would take to come to this point. Now, this year 2010 is a stunner to me as well.
I am a 70-year-old who feels 45, and I’m realizing that my granddaughter Shannon is about ready to graduate from college, and that Nancy and I will have been married for 50 years in January next year! As the popular song of several years ago said, “Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away?!”
I think it was Benjamin Franklin, who, years ago, said “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise!” Maybe that’s where we go awry, not going to bed early enough and not getting up early enough. The hope is that if the passing of time can’t make us healthy and wealthy, at least it will make us wise. I still believe that life experience and the passing of time are supposed to make us wiser. But then Istart reading the letters to the editor in the newspaper and my confidence is shaken. Maybe getting older doesn’t necessarily make us wiser. But trying to stay forever young doesn’t make us wiser either!
I notice that procrastination, putting off things you intend to do eventually, let’s time get away.
Wisdom says to do those good things now, not putting off until tomorrow what can be done today!
So, does that mean that we need to cram our lives full of every activity we dream of doing? No, that doesn’t work, either. Overcrowded, overscheduled, overreaching lives lose effectiveness;
nothing gets done well, everything becomes stressful and strained. Wisdom also calls for slowing down, focusing, letting go the tendency to want everything, go everywhere, do everything, in favor of doing some meaningful things well. And what about finding time to smell the roses, to sit and let a beautiful scene seep all through us, to rest enough, to reflect on life as we live it, to dwell on the interestingness of our experiences, to learn from those who have lived before us and from those who share the quest with us now?
Then I note that boredom is one of the worst things to make life drag along, all the while allowing it toslip wastefully away. But the remedy for boredom is not an easy medicine to dispense. When the kids come to you saying, “I’m bored! There’s nothing to do,” just try suggesting a few things to them. Like as not, everything you suggest will sound boring.
The mood domineers over thought and appreciation.
The attitude obstructs the solution. Then again, what awful messes people make for themselves and those around them by resorting to desperate, reckless and irresponsible attempts to escape their boredom!
Many attempts to escape boredom do not reveal the interestingness of life, and may further deaden our ability to sense and appreciate the interestingness of things.
One fascinating thing I have observed, as time has slipped away, is that as two people experience the same ups and downs in life, one will find living to be fascinating and fulfilling, while the other may be dying of boredom. One is open, awake, alive. The other is comatose, as time slips away.
Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 02/17/2010