The phone starts beeping, the hour turns to 7:00 AM and life begins. I have exactly 55 minutes to get out of the house, in order to get in time wherever life needs me. In time, I always do my best to make it in time. I never liked being late and I’d rather be 15 minutes earlier, and had to wait, than not make it on time and have the other party waiting for me.

Maybe because I am easily, but surely, approaching the middle of my life, according to most statistics, I took my time and took a look at… time! When I was a child I couldn’t stand sleeping, I even stated a few times (at the age of 5 or 6), that my midday nap was a waste of time! There were so many things that just couldn’t wait for me to sleep! All the novelty, all the life that was happening, all the fascinating things around me, all new and unexplored, and they wanted me to sleep?!?! I had so much energy and enthusiasm that you could have better convinced a horse or a bull to sleep, than me.

Then, the days got longer, school begun. Time started to have a totally different meaning, as everything suddenly changed, it turned from exploring time and space according to my own terms, into having my first timely deadlines: homework, bed time, waking up time, and school tests. Time started to feel like something constrictive, restrictive and punitive. It turned from my biggest ally and friend, from something that had to be exploited at full capacity, into a sort of annoying little thing, wrapped around my life, something that I would have wanted to ignore and never have to deal with again. After hi-school, life took over. There was no more time to think about time, at one point I even lost track of all the events that were going on around me, and I woke up… 10 years later.

I was fortunate enough to get to an environment where there is time! I had to learn not to rush anymore and take another look at time. I started contemplating where all the 30+ years went already, what I was wishing 10 or 15 years ago, and what happened to all that. The conclusion is that is all here! It would have been wonderful for my wishes to have happened during those years, but some of them happened 5 to 20 years later. With wishes like having a house or a family, now I am convinced it’s even better things didn’t happen sooner. The most important thing that time ever thought me was that wishes always come true, but only when you are ready, or as Time would say it: when your time is here and now!

I came again from feeling time as a constraint and my enemy, to seeing it as my ally, confident and best friend. I have come to the conclusion that time is irrelevant for the needs of the Ego, as the Ego demands everything right away, but it’s my best friend in self development and learning about myself. We experience time only so we could feel everything that is time related: joy, sadness, being head over heels and feeling yourself immortal, dreadful sorrow that seems to make days endless and time unbearable, enthusiasm, preparation, anticipation, everything! There is nothing in our perceivable Universe that is not related somehow to time. In time you can connect the dots, you can draw a conclusion and have things revealed. Everything is based on, uses and requires time, even our thoughts. A thought that is too short and not given enough time, will fade away and we might not even remember having it. But time goes along with focus, with being there, in the moment and with all your senses awake. Time is neutral, can live with or without us, just like the Sun. It’s only up to us, on a continuous basis, to see it as a friend or as an annoying burden. Time is not the same for all of us, even if we try to standardize it and give it dimensions. How we all perceive time is only up to how we choose to use it. And above all, I have never heard about an autobiography written, Nobel prize won or even the adventure or his lifetime being lived by a 5 year old.

Getting used to life takes time, as we are infinite individuals on a playground made of matter, with dimensions, structures and particular rules. We come from chaos and we shall return to it once our life ceases to exist, so it is only normal we need time to get adjusted to putting our infinite chaos into well determined structures. Just like children need time to discover fluent and controlled motion over chaotically moving limbs, we all need time to go through this life.

If you are ever feeling that you lost your time, don’t worry! There is no such thing to lose! If you had done everything sooner than it happened, you would have lost the entire experience and knowledge brought by it. If you ever condemn yourself for not speeding up enough to others’ standards, just take your time. It’s yours! Don’t beat yourself about it, just use it as you best consider, because, after all, it’s both subjective and irrelevant.

Time has the meaning we give it, and after years of conflict, I chose to call Time “my friend”!