Gathering Time

Read the word “gathering’ in the title as a verb, not an adjective. Now, read the word ‘time’ as a commodity, not a dimension or means of measuring. Very good. And that is the secret to a long life that has nothing to do with living many years.

There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together." Our walk through life is exactly the way it should be. A walk. A stroll. A meander. Making new friends along the way, and going slower after each stop to add new people on our journey.

You could say life is a marathon, not a sprint. But even that doesn’t adequately prepare you for how deliberately, how purposefully we should be taking this expedition through life. Slow, steady, and together is how we should be approaching life. It is how we gather time, time to exchange time for experiences. The sun shines brighter and feels warmer, the food tastes better, the days are fuller when they are shared.

Every week last summer, Olive Community Services of Los Angeles held a ‘Grandma Camp.’ Officially it was the Intergenerational Summer Camp, but the grandmas were in charge. They met weekly with 8-14 year olds to teach the young ones how to cook, sew, and make jewelry and cards. The things your parents and grandparents taught you and that you are teaching your children and grandchildren. It was the first exposure to some of these activities for many of the children. For many others though, they already had been cooking and sewing for years so they were not new activities. They were new experiences.

It is clear what the older volunteer-counselors were gathering. They were trading the experiences they had gathered during their lives for new ones to fight the isolation and loneliness that often intrude on life in one’s 'golden years.’ The young attendees were also gathering. They gathered new skills, but they were also gathering experiences different from the skills they learned at home, or different ways to perform those skills as they added new people to their collection of fellow humans. They had slowed down from the frenetic pace of childhood to gather time with their new friends, experiences they added to their lives that someday they will share.

When you slow down on your walk through life you get a new appreciation for what it means to live in the moment. Not just because you have the time to take in all that is happening around you. You also get to appreciate that every minute can be a moment. Life is not rushing from moment to moment. It is a series of moments, each one a potential memory and each one a definite experience.

The people met, the experiences had, the lessons learned from those moments last a lifetime. Those people will always have been there, experiences were always available, the lessons were always taught, but if you were not watching for them, slowing down so they could become a moment in your time, you might move right past them and lose all that was waiting for you.

Life isn’t a sprint. It’s not even a marathon. It’s a slow walk, a stroll, a meander. It’s a chance to gather time.