Time flies - But it doesn't have to leave without us

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​Yesterday was a day of reflection for me.

I'd originally scheduled the day off for my birthday. Then I told my boss, never mind - I don't have big plans - why waste a vacation day. But by late afternoon - I realized I'd done nothing but sit - and reflect - and do exactly NOTHING work related.

Hey boss, it's me again. We'd better count that as a vacation day after all ?‍♂️.

Yesterday was a perfect storm for someone prone to reflecting. Nothing makes you do a more thorough accounting of life than birthdays and death.

Yesterday had both in my world.

My friend Melissa passed away yesterday. I spent a lot of the day reading posts and messages from hundreds of people she'd impacted. People who'd had interactions with her that left lasting impressions. Melissa, it became clear, had a way of marching into people's lives and time-stamping a memory on a heart that would never fade.

At the same time, I had friends reaching out to me with birthday wishes. Many of them with pictures and memories of interactions we'd had over the years. Interactions that in many ways had left memories time-stamped on their hearts as well.

Birthdays and death both have this power to make us believe that time flies - that life is short. Maybe it does. Maybe it is. But I went to bed last night summarizing my day of reflection with this belief:

Time flies. But it doesn't have to leave without us.

My friend Melissa - she is gone. But that girl is literally time-stamped on hearts all over this country. She has days and weeks and months dating back decades that she simply owns in people's hearts.

In many ways, she tied a moment of time to people's hearts and said, time - you stay right here. You're not leaving without me.

I think I wake up today more committed than ever to do that - to tie moments of time to people's hearts. Moments that years from now will leave people standing, maybe on a trail out in the middle of nowhere, holding a piece of time like a balloon, shouting ha! You thought you got away from me time - but I held on to a piece of you.

The biggest problem with time isn't that it flies like a plane. The biggest problem with time is it can disguise itself as a snail - a creature that crawls along in no hurry at all, seemingly never reaching its destination.

The biggest problem with time isn't that the tomorrows come all too quickly. The biggest problem with time is that it can lure us into believing that tomorrows will always come.

The reality is tomorrows don't always come. Time does reach its final destination.

The real question is how many time-stamps will we leave behind.

Here's the thing - these time-stamps - they don't have to be 'save the world' gestures to leave a stamp. Many friends yesterday were recalling conversations, timely messages, a meal or a run together. Some of them recalled simply witnessing someone doing something inspirational.

I had a friend tell me this yesterday - "This last year has definitely taught me quality is so much better than quantity."

I fear that some days I'm a quantity collector.

How many friends do I have? How much money do I have? How many miles have I run? How many years left until I can retire?

I fear some days me and maybe we are too into the numbers in life.

But quality - quality is about the stories.

Quality is the narrative in life. It's possible to have 2000 friends in this world who don't have a single time-stamped story to tell about that friendship on your birthday or when you pass on. It's possible to run 2000 miles in a year, yet not have a meaningful story to tell about those miles other than I did it. It's possible to have 2000 zillion dollars in the bank yet not have a meaningful experience to share about any one of those dollars.

Maybe that's when time flies - when we are collecting numbers and not stories.

I don't know - I just know today I'm a little more committed to time-stamping something on your heart. Today, more than yesterday, I want your reading this article to tie this moment in time to your heart more than I want you to be the 20th or 50th or 100th person to hit the like button.

And today, more than yesterday, I want you to go time-stamp something on someone else's heart.

Time flies. But it doesn't have to leave without us. We can keep a piece of time. As time flies off, we can always make time feel like it rushed off and left something behind.

Something tells me that's how time was designed to feel.

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