What time is it?

On 14th April 2021 the people of Nepal will celebrate New Years day, and in their calendar the year will be 2078.

That could mean they are fifty-seven years ahead of us; but, in reality, it means they are measuring time with a different ruler to the one we use.

And, they are not the only ones, for we all measure time by different standards and for each of us time sometimes drags slowly and at other times it races away. holidays can be too short; winter can hibernate for ages, and as we get older the years seem to fly by.

Maybe we should pause and be a little more attentive to the passing of time and consider how we use the time we have.

What dreams did we have before we got caught in the rut of our everyday experience?

How much time do we waste, or allow to run through our fingers as we watch some meaningless channel on the TV.

And consider how ‘time’ has been changed with the Covid-19 pandemic, routines have been shredded and we are having to find new reference points for what was once clockwork.

It’s probably a good thing that we never know how much time we have left; or is it?

One of the delightful miracles of time is that we can create more of it, and those who have experienced a contemplative or meditative period will know that time can be quite malleable.

One of the best ways to create time, is to give some of your time to someone else, for then they have even more than they had before.

And this can have amazing results.

The time we give to the kids in Nepal is creating a future for them that they would never have had on their own.

Imagine that, you can create a whole lifetime of possibilities for someone else.

Now, imagine if we all did that, around the world, those with a little time to spare (or perhaps to not waste) giving, or rather creating futures for others that otherwise would have no future.

Perhaps the time is coming when that will be the new normal, and then we will, collectively, have more time!