I don’t know who decided this, but I think it’s stupid and a little weird. This hustle and bustle thing. This strange idea that in our lifetime, we are in some sort of race. But what exactly are we trying to beat? I know. It’s time. We are competing against time in our attempts to live the lives we imagined for ourselves before death arrives at our doors.

But isn’t it a little weird how consuming this fight against time really is. I mean almost everything we do we allow to be dictated by time. We put everything in a box, running this way and that trying to keep the box from overflowing.

What’s even weirder is that we haven’t always been this way. We haven’t always been busy bees, rushing to accomplish everything. We became that way, each of us. We experience some sort of crazy transformation as we get older. In this transformation, we move from being lighthearted little ones to adults who are far too aware of time. It’s like we graduate from school and our eyes are snapped open to a weird world consumed by time. We walk through graduation’s doors only to be thrust into a stampede. I imagine that this happened to you because it certainly happened to me.

When I was a kid, I had all the time in the world. There was no rush. I believed I could do everything, one at a time, one after the other. I had time to eat, sleep, play, learn, and even find new things to get into in all the spare moments. I never felt like I was running out of time. And then I graduated. Suddenly, I had loans to pay, assignments to finish, goals to reach, and things I need to accomplish. I spread myself out to different interests, hobbies, and activities. I suddenly became intensely aware of how valuable I deemed my time to be. And more than just being aware of it, I began protecting it like a mama bear to her cub, getting angry when anyone or anything wasted it. I was sprinting through my early adulthood like everyone else, desperately reaching out to some future goal that would make all the running worth it.

But at some point I stopped. I stopped running for just a moment and looked around. All around me, people were huffing and puffing, crying and frowning, drowning in their own pools of stress. I looked out ahead to see where we were all headed. There was nothing. I looked behind me only to find stressed faces staring back. I let out a sigh as I made my way to the side, sat down, and really started to contemplate this strange life we are all living. Why were we all in such a hurry? Where were we going? And why?

I looked up and found my answers.

We are in a hurry because our bodies are deceiving us. That stupid sinful flesh keeps telling us that time is running out. That if we don’t accomplish this today, finish this right now, do this thing ASAP, we won’t ever be able to do it. It keeps telling us that this little ounce of time is all we have, so we need to stuff as much into it as possible. But that’s a lie. It’s all a lie.

We are running in circles, going nowhere, being chased by the ghost we call time. But in reality, there is nothing really chasing us. Yes, the lives we live on this earth are finite, lasting a few decades and then passing away. But that is the life of our bodies, our flesh, our earthly shells. They are encapsulated by this finite time. They have only a limited amount of time to do everything. But we, we souls, are not restricted to that. Whether your soul desires it or not, when time reaches its completion and the body meets its last day, we souls will move on to a world not restricted by time. A place not restricted by hustle and bustle. It’s a place where we will spend eternity. For some that place will be a dreadful one, but for others (and hopefully you) it will be a place of absolute joy. And yeah, we may not be doing the same things we dreamed of doing in this life. But I’d like to think that when we move to that new world and meet our Maker, our dreams and desires will be drastically different.

And I get it. That’s later on, not now. We obviously have to do things in this life and should desire to accomplish a thing or two while we are here. But I’m far too tired to keep running in circles. I want to walk peacefully, enjoying the sites around me and eagerly anticipating what is to come. I don’t want to keep being dragged around with the stampede, painting my face in stress. Because ultimately, what’s the point? We’ll get to where we’re supposed to go and do the things we are supposed to do all in the right, all in His time. So why fight it?

K.J. 10/15/18