It seems like people always want to change how time passes. Like how we often want more hours in the day to get things done, or sometimes you’ll be sitting in a boring class just hoping for time to go by more quickly. But the thing about time is that it doesn’t really care about what you want: it will consistently proceed at the same speed no matter what.
When you’re in a relationship with someone that you care about, time holds a new meaning. The days with each other pass by so quickly, the FaceTime calls feel like minutes when it’s been over an hour, and you count the days until you’ll see them again. When you’re apart you want time to speed up, but when you’re together you wish you could just freeze it for a while.
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Sitting in the kitchen with my last boyfriend toward the beginning of our relationship, I glanced at the clock on the wall and watched the seconds tick by. 8:32 and 51 seconds, 52 seconds, and so on. This freaked me out, so I looked away. I didn’t want to acknowledge that time was slowly passing. My biggest fear then was time and not having enough of it or wasting the precious time that we are given. I’ve also always been a planner, focusing too much on the future and sometimes forgetting about the present.
It wasn’t until spending more time with him that I started to understand how differently time passes when you’re in a relationship as compared to everything I had previously experienced. This realization hit me a few months into dating on an autumn afternoon. We were walking down a path along the St. Croix River hand in hand. All I could see up ahead were the trees filled with vibrant fall leaves hanging over the path in front of us. Because of the trees covering up the path, we couldn’t see too far ahead or where we were walking next. What was to come was unclear, but irrelevant at the moment.
It felt like time had almost stopped while we were walking on this path, and I loved that. My steps felt a little lighter because of how I felt then about the guy walking next to me. And for once, I wasn’t focused on the future. I wasn’t thinking about getting on a bus later that day or the next time I would see him, but only what was around me in that present moment. This included his blue hoodie and his smile, along with the leaves drifting off of the trees around us like puzzle pieces falling into place.
It felt like we were in an alternate time zone or a sort of dreamland looking back at it later. It was a wonderland that we got lost in, and the idea of time was forgotten. For the first time, I realized I was perfectly content with letting the minutes slip away. He told me later that he could have walked down that path with me all day, and I agreed because I finally understood what living in the moment was all about. The past would always be there and the future would always be coming, but when I was him, the present was all that occupied my mind.
I think that if you’re with the right person, time passes differently. Distractions, deadlines, and strangers around you fade away. Though we’re no longer together, I don’t regret the time I spent with him because of how those moments made me feel. The little things like walking down that path with him, under trees alive with color, created swells of happiness for me. They are moments that I could never forget, and that I never want to forget.
After that day on the riverside path, I started to enjoy the present a little more each day. I never thanked him for this, but he helped erase my fear of time. I think of time differently now, and I’m content while watching the seconds tick by on a wall clock. I’ve learned to acknowledge time’s passing, but simply let it be.
