As a teenager I used to be impatient, waiting for time to pass so that I could get on to the next thing. My mother used to tell me, "Don't wish your life away." She said that when I became older, I'd understand that time moves ever more quickly, until there was never enough of it.
My response was to roll my eyes and mutter, "yeah, sure," then check my watch again.
These days I don't wear a watch because I don't want a reminder of just how right my mother was. I don't have enough time for all the things I want to do, and several times a year I find myself gobsmacked to discover that whole months have passed without my conscious knowledge.
I don't know if this skewed time sense can be considered a disability. I do know that sometimes it's a blessing.
My father was young when he died, only 49, but he was a wise man. My memory of it is kind of hazy, but I recall a severe ecomonic downturn just around the time I graduated high school. I was laid off from my part-time job and was nervous about my prospects for finding a full-time job. I remember my father telling me not to worry, that things were cyclical and although it looked bleak at the moment, the economy would turn around. "People are too greedy to let this go on for long," he said.
I was dubious, but he turned out to be right. Within a few months, I had a full-time job and was able to leave home. It seems like a lifetime ago
I remembered what my father told me when gas prices reached $4.05 per gallon a couple of months ago. I hoped he was right, and now I'm paying $2.05.
So what's the lesson here?
Yes, things are tough now. We're engaged in two wars with little expectation of success for either. Nearly half a million people have lost their jobs, many are losing their homes to foreclosure, and despite the tightening of the bankruptcy laws, filings are up. Our retirement accounts are rapidly shrinking, and there seems little to look forward to.
But this is a special time of year. People gravitate toward family, and once again learn that giving is often more satisfying than receiving. We look forward to a new year — and a new president — in hopes that better times will return.
So if it's true that everything is cyclical and time is moving more quickly, maybe our dire economic situation will begin to turn around next year. If my father's simple wisdom holds, it should. We are all growing older, and probably experiencing that compression of time that my mother warned me about, so the good news is we should not suffer long.
Both of my parents are gone now, and I feel as if I've learned a lot from them. Borrowing from the lessons they've taught me, my holiday wish for you is that our collective financial situation improves soon. My New Year's prediction is that it will.