In my head I’ve been hearing the refrain from The Chambers Brothers song Time Has Come Today . In the song you hear a magnified TICK TOCK sound and the Chambers Brothers shouting TIME! TIME! TIME! throughout the song.

Time has very much been on my mind of late. How much time it takes to do, well, pretty much everything. At least it takes a lot of time when I slow down and pay attention, really be present. Then I’m aware of how much time it takes to heal; how much time it takes to develop a healthy perspective and attitude about life, other people, myself. How much time it takes to ground, to rest, to recuperate. How much time it takes to come to an acceptance and embrace of our lives. We think we need to spend our time doing things, accomplishing things. We forget about the time we need to spend being with ourselves and our internal being and process. We struggle with how to use our time in a balanced way.

We don’t know what time, and thus life, holds for us. We can plan our time, intend what we are going to do with our time each day, each year . . . and then life happens, as we all experience. And the time we thought we’d be using for something “productive” out there, is used for allowing grace within ourselves.

Time holds loss, surprise, disappointment, joy, ease, intensity, grief, love. Time is just our marker for the passing of life. I’ve been deciding to live life just as it is presenting itself each day, keeping what plans I can, letting go of what’s not possible, for now. Prioritizing what actually needs to be done today, really. And then realizing what I actually can do today out of what “needs” to be done. It turns out I don’t have time for a lot of things I “need” to do. It also turns out that it doesn’t matter.

Time keeps moving no matter what. I used to feel the current of it, always feeling I was lagging behind. Now I feel it surrounding me, like a vessel, carrying me along. I can’t see what’s ahead or behind. So I rest in the arms of the vessel of time. I can trust the path, my path, or not. Trusting or not, I’m still navigating my path in just the right way, carried along each day by the momentum of the Universe. We can’t be separate from the flow of Life. And we each have our own path that is unfolding in just the right way, in just the right time. It just takes the time it takes.