Once in a writing class we were asked to interpret the meaning of a poem on the topic of time and then explain what it meant to us.

Students in the class handed in papers based on some of the classics; “A Memory of Youth” by Yeats, excerpts from "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman, and “the Future Never Spoke” by Emily Dickinson.

I wrote my paper based on my interpretation of the song Time by Pink Floyd.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I'd something more to say

I wish I’d saved my paper [which btw got me an A in that class] I think I was around 19. It was all about how time is fleeting and the “sun” in the lyrics represents life and when we’re younger it all seems so eternal. Like how when we were little our house seemed so big but now as adults the same house seems so small. It was about our perception of things when we are living in the moment versus when we’re older and we become aware of the grand scale and importance of things because time has away of stealing them from us. Then we start chasing it to make up for lost opportunities, but we wake up one day and realize it might be too late because we squandered too much away.

When we are young we live completely in the moment. Not really thinking much past when daddy is coming home or when we can have our next ice cream cone. Most of us have really no concept of fear, loss or time. We have virtually no responsibilities or sense of urgency.

Then something happens around the time we become teenagers, maturity and the first twangs of independence start to filter in. Suddenly we start wishing time would advance. We are no longer complacent to stay stuck in the land of childhood. We long to fly from the nest and we start wishing our childhood away, which in retrospect is kind of sad.

We can’t wait for time to pass. To turn 16 so we can drive, go on dates, and earn our own money. Before we know it we are longing to reach 18 so we can vote and be of legal age.
The next 3 years all we want to do is turn 21 so we can drink and party.

Then we want to go off to college to find ourselves. To assert our independence and strike out, away from the familiar to define our new world that functions on nobody else’s clock.

We spend the next several years chasing freedom with a vengeance until we reach a point where we feel we’ve gotten enough of it out of our systems so we can settle down again. This is when most people start to long for a familiar to call their own.

Some of us need to remain in this unattached phase longer than others and some skip right over it in a blink jumping from one dependency to another with no time in between for themselves. Which way is better? Which way is right? I don’t think there is any one answer. I think it all goes back to the same thing. Timing. Everyone’s timing has to be right for them. And everyone is operating on their individual watch.

Then we start to grow older and somewhere around 30 is when we begin to wish we could turn the clocks back. Way back to a time when we were able to live in the moment again to a simpler time before the obligations and responsibilities that come with age, burden the freedom away.

We start to wish we hadn’t spent so much of the past wishing all that time away because by now we’ve had a taste of the sun going down. Most of us have experienced loss and fear. Darkness.

In a mad full circle chain of events we now long to slow things down again. We can sense that time is running out to enjoy ourselves while we still can. To relish in our loved ones while they’re still around. To make the most of time with our parents, our grandparents, our siblings, our children, nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins, our friends and our pets.

At the same time we become hyper aware that we have a smaller window of time in which to accomplish all of our personal goals; travel to foreign countries, be where we want to be in our careers, learn to play golf, find a mate and marry, have children while we still can. Ultimately taking comfort in watching it all repeat itself over again through their eyes. That’s the reward.

Suddenly we become responsible for someone else’s time. Someone else who is operating on a completely different clock, which may be the scariest thing of all. Because we have learned that time is the most precious commodity and not only do we not want to waste any of our own time, we also don’t want to waste any of theirs.

If I had to rewrite my paper now in my 30’s this is the part I would include. The part I’ve come to realize over the years. How it’s not so much time itself that defines our human relationships. But our individual timing and the cumulative effects of where we’re at along the sun lit path when we happen into one another's world.