If I Had More Time. . . . By Constantine Gochis

It is time for another Constantine story. As I go through them, always a bit of delightful discovery of a person I knew, but didn't. Isn't that always the case with those closest to us? This particular entry somehow also seems apropos to the period through which we are living. And so, I leave my father to posit the question

IF I HAD MORE TIME?

There is no shortage of attributions, and a multiplicity of aphorisms on the subject of Time. It stands still.  It flies. It waits for no man.  It inspires the musing of poets.  It is like an ominous weather system that hovers in the sky above your town.  It waxes and wanes.  It is of the essence. Witness:

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

Until the last syllable of recorded time. . ."

It is precious for some and a matter of indifference to others.  The former have reason to mistrust the idiosyncrasies of Time.  Who knew this better than Napoleon who addressed his conquering soldiers in Egypt in the beginning days of his glory with this epiphany:

"Go sir, gallop, and don't forget that the world

was made in six days.  You can ask me for anything

you like, except time."

Besides, he said to his assembled horde:

"Soldiers, from the summit of yonder pyramids

forty centuries look down upon you."

That's a lot of yesterdays.

And you ask me, "What if you had more time?"

If this is a genuine offer, and indeed you are the One who can shape the infinite, I beseech you listen to my confession.

I look with sadness in the "recycle bin" of my life.  Do not judge quickly.  It is no better nor worse than the lot of most of us.  Perhaps it is a little less worthy, somewhat short of the "Image" in which we are made.

And in the matter of Time, great gaps of nothing done, little of any marked consequence.  The great challenges that have crossed my path are still undone.  It is the nature of Time to expand to meet the needs of one's procrastination.  Nevertheless, I beseech all who are wont to judge.  We are cast into this infinity of candy stores, like children with varying amounts of small change.  The things you want to buy are always just a little more than the coins you have to offer.

Still there is some sweetness in whatever we choose so a little more of the same cannot hurt.  It is definitely in order to tarry a little longer.  Hence, if I had more time. . ..

I am prone, for better of for worse, to persist in the ruts I have made already in the road of life--essentially, whatever I have done before.  I am a fallible, weak vessel.  Time is precious even if one does nothing with it except loll in the glory of Creation and reflect on the celestial brightness of the sun caught in a dew drop on a leaf.  The poet T.S. Eliot, however, laments:

"Where is the life we have lost in living?

Were is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust."

Lighten up, Thomas.  Omar the tent maker said it best. "Take the cash and let the credit go."