The importance of time

Another great weekend races by living with my cancer, lots of quality time spent with the kids. The word time enters my thoughts so much more than it used to before I was diagnosed with cancer. I now look at time in a completly different way, it’s now a thing, it used to be a nothing. It almost has a physical presence, I can touch it I can feel it and most frightening of all I can feel it slipping through my fingers like a handful of sand that slowly dissapears. Time is probably the most important word we have in our lives and yet we treat it sometimes with nothing more than contempt often willing to waste it as much as possible to be somewhere else using more time.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since my doctor told me, after me persistently badgering her for an answer for how much time I have left, her answer was worst case scenario 2 years, best case may be 5 years for someone in my condition. I was in a serious state when I asked the question. That was 8 months ago and my god has that gone quick! I’ve done a lot in that time but I’ve also wasted a bit of it. My big regret is how much time I need to sleep off my fatigue which hits me every night and weekends after being at work. Don’t get me wrong I’m so grateful for being able to go to work but the price I pay is a need for lots of sleep which of course is my precious time. The reality of all that is I can’t think of it that way because that defies what I’m trying to achieve, I need the extra sleep in order to live my life to the fullest extent I can with this illness inside of me.

I wonder how many of us use the phrase “pass the time” not knowing when those sands are going to stop. We pass the time often in a bored state so we can do something else. When you are diagnosed with a life threatening illness the meaning of time suddenly changes. I don’t have time changes to I must have time. I need to make time for the things that matter not watch the time slowly ticking away. The thing with time is it is not replaceable, once you have lost it you can never claim it back, it’s gone forever. Time is the most precious commodity we have, we can’t buy it because it’s given to us freely with no charge attached. We can’t sell it either , it’s got no monitory value because it’s a priceless gift that is ours and ours only, you can’t even lend a bit to someone else, it’s just yours and yours alone and what you do with it can make it a useless or an incredible gift. You have the power to chose what you do with your time no one can change that.

I’m sure, you like me have spent hours wishing time would go faster and then you reach a point in your life where you start to wish the complete opposite and just when you want time to slow down it starts for some strange reason to speed up, as if it’s saying you wasted so much of me and now I’m not giving you as much as you want. You’ve wished me away and now I’m letting your wish come true. How much of life do we simply wish away as if it doesn’t matter, as if we have an inexhaustible supply of time that will never run out.

I write this blog today because I’ve been given another chance to use my time in a different way. Yes I sleep twice as much as I used to because without that sleep I would not be able to spend my time in a good way. I love my job, I love my family and quite honestly I’ve learned to love the world again that I sit on and is spinning its way through its own time at hundreds of miles per hour, through a universe that’s vast and seemingly timeless. But even the universe will eventually run out of its own time. I’m holding on for the ride and starting to enjoy as much of it as I can, ive learnt to pause time by noticing things in a different way that time can’t erase.

Every thing I see that’s good in the world slows time down for me. I see my children laugh and smile and time freezes in that instant never to be erased or taken away. I see my wife looking beautiful I take a photo with my eyes that goes into my endless photo album of memories. Every bird song I pause and take the precious time to listen to it and thank about it and remember how it felt at that exact moment in time. The sun rising and setting is one to treasure, each one is a gift to us every single day, if you are lucky enough to see it don’t just see it, be it, look at it as if it’s the last thing you will ever see and it will stay with you forever.

Every moment is a new experience in time, treasure them and time will last much longer than you can ever believe possible. Don’t wish it away because your wish will one day come true. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few months worrying about my time, trying to make sense of time and reality. My time that is left will not be spent wishing for things I can’t have, being jealous of what other people have or striving for a better life. My time will be spent being grateful for what I have which billions of pounds of money can’t buy. Time, when it’s spent with love, is endless.

Love Woody ❤️