Photo Credit: Leyvaine Davids | Unsplash

This Week’s Soul Reflection

Time has been on my mind this week, and how quickly it seems to fly. I suspect it’s because I’m coming up on the anniversary of my mother’s death. I can hardly believe it’s been a year. It feels more recent than that, but the calendar says otherwise, and there we have it.

That gap between what the calendar says and what my heart knows has me noticing time everywhere. I have friendships that span decades. I remember coming to live in America in the 1970s as if it were a recent chapter. Tim Miller of The Bulwark, one of my favorite podcasters, likes to say “time is a flat circle.” The phrase doesn’t quite make sense, and maybe that’s the point. The way time slips by defies logic.

Summer is giving way to fall, and after this year, I’m more aware than ever of how quickly the moment I’m in goes by. We all get the same 24 hours in a day. So how will I spend mine? With gratitude, and In ways that bring out the joy in me. Acting on a spark of inspiration instead of second-guessing it. Honoring both the time I’ve clocked and the time I’m in.

Time is a relative construct. I measure it less by the calendar than by the friends I’ve made along the way. That’s a gift I trace to my father. In the early ‘90s, working on my own as a consultant, I mentioned to him how small my social world had become. His advice was simple: join organizations that interest you. That ten-minute phone call has shaped more than thirty years of friendships. (I wrote about his lesson here.) Some of these friends have been in my life for many seasons; others came and went. However long they stayed, each one made my life richer, and I am forever grateful.

A year on, I feel that most with my mother. Though she’s gone in the flesh, she lives on in me.

Lately I’ve been listening to Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, especially “As,” a moving song about the timelessness of love. It reminds me that love doesn’t keep the calendar’s time.

In the end, time is best reflected in my evolving. From moment to moment, I’m not the same person. The change may not be visible (though my grays say otherwise), but each moment leaves its mark.

And I choose to cherish it.

What spark of inspiration have you been second-guessing that you could act on this week?

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Thank you for spending this time with Sunday  Soul Flow — a three-course serving for your week ahead. Today’s #SoulFood is to savor. Today’s #SoulKey offers the flavor of the quote — and This Week’s Soul Reflection traces where this serving led me. See where it leads you.