time is just a melody

I like to blog on airplanes.

I could tell you it’s to pass the time or to record the memories of my trip, but honestly it’s because I like to look scholarly and sophisticated. An airplane is a good place to look scholarly and sophisticated.

Sometimes on airplanes I read big books of poetry and ask the flight attendant for a glass of tomAHto juice with a fake British accent (not really, but you get the picture).

Anyway, this isn’t a blog about sophistication or any pretense of it; this is a blog about time.

Time’s a funny thing and I often find myself thinking about it on airplanes (when I’m not reading Byron). Probably because airplanes are about the closest things we have to time machines. You encapsulate yourself in a flying tube, zoom through the stratosphere, and wind up in a completely different environment and time zone.

This morning from my bedroom window, I watched as the sun crept up NC’s eastern horizon. This evening I saw the Pacific extinguish that same ball of fire over Oahu’s western shore. Before watches and cell phones, the sun was the only way to tell the time. I think I’d like it that way; then I could use phrases like “high noon.”

I learned in college about how different cultures perceive the concept of time. Some cultures, like many of those in North America and Europe, view time rather strictly; it’s what keeps everything flowing orderly and efficiently. Other cultures place much less importance on chronology and tend to live more in the moment.

Hawaii is one of the few places in the US where you find that second mentality; where people slow down and enjoy the sunset; where nothing is too pressing or important to keep you from saying hi to your neighbor.

It’s all about priorities, really. I think when we stop worrying so much about time we’re actually able to do more with it. In the end, that’s really all we can do with our time: use it. We cannot kill time and we cannot save time. All we can do is use our time, or, of course, waste it.

We can’t create a better world until we start living better lives and we can’t do that until we learn to appreciate the time we've been given.

The real question is what will you do with your time? Things that matter? Things that impact people’s lives? Things that create positive change? Or things that don’t? Whatever you decide to do with your time, take a second to slow down and enjoy it.


Now enjoy one of the island's own: