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Hmmm, am I just having trouble keeping pace as I get older or does an hour really pass more quickly than it used to?

It has been another frenzied work week. Chasing deadlines that seem to run a circle around me until they are actually pursuing me nipping at my heels. We are in the throes of change as our organization – now merged with two others – rebrands and reinvents itself. Staying relevant, it seems, is a constantly shifting target these days.

I am attempting to unwind so I can enjoy the weekend. It takes considerable effort now – much more than it used to – to uncoil my anxious muscles and gear down my multi-tasking brain. Relaxation is stressful – the defining oxymoron for our high octane society.

It helps to gaze out my apartment window at the pond down below and the trees that surround it. Tomorrow I’ll retreat to the whispering woodland, the murmuring marsh and the untamed fields to quiet my breathing and refresh my soul.

But wait. Is that a slight wash of colour I see in the maple trees? It is after all only mid August. Surely that can’t be the first faint hues of autumn I see. But alas, it is. Summer has passed her zenith and is starting her slow, graceful slide toward the change.

Where has the summer gone? I’m not ready to let her go. I want to languish in her splendour awhile yet. But somehow she got loose from me and raced on ahead. I should have paid more attention. I should have spent less time watching the clock and more time watching the curling waves roll onto the beach.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the border seasons – spring and autumn – even more than the grand lady summer herself. I’m just not ready to make the transition yet. There were more places I wanted to go to see nature in full bloom.

But ready or not the turn of the seasons is coming. I would like to believe that time itself has sharpened its pace and is therefore to blame. But I know that time is a constant. It is the velocity of our lives that keeps accelerating.

All too often I become aware that I am hurrying for no good reason. I tell myself it is because I want to get all the “stuff” done and out of the way so I can enjoy the simpler things. But the “stuff” keeps accumulating faster than I can sweep it aside.

The speckling of colour in the August leaves is a metaphor for the precious moments that we let slip by because we are too busy. Too busy trying to get unbusy. Too busy chasing the shifting target of stasis.

The pure and simple truth is this: All we have is the moment which we exist in right now. We can’t win the race with time. We can’t get all the “stuff” done. We have to surrender and find joy in the moment. That’s as good a definition of happiness as I can think of.

I resolve to stop running. To stop being chased. To just breathe. And to smile at those pre-autumn colours in the leaves. It’s a start. Where will you begin?

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.

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Tags:   happiness · live in the moment · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · surrender2 Comments