Twelve little newsletters since the rebirth in August last year: That is where we are now. Time is no-one’s fool indeed. For the newcomers, we started with edition 1 on the 24th of November 1997, one month after the day we took over the pharmacy.
For 5 years, without missing a single one, we produced sixty editions of the letter, doing the last one on October 27th, 2002; exactly 5 years to the day from the time we took over. It also was my wife Renette’s birthday (it pays to advertise as it is almost time for it again). On that day, a Sunday, I typed the last newsletter. Until August last year, that is. Thirty four lazy months! But we’re back.
So last month saw the story of little Flenters the dog. My heartfelt thanks go to everybody who phoned, or came in to enquire, or just passed a nice comment on his wellbeing. Quite a popular doggie!
Also, the tongue-in-cheek “genuine” sympathetic observations about the broken toe have been noted. Thanks. Really, thanks.
It has healed now, so let us please leave the history behind.
This coming weekend sees us off to the Imfolozi game reserve up North to do a mountain bike ride through Big 5 country in aid of conservation.
You do not have to be quicker than the lion; you just have to be quicker than a fellow cyclist. Easy. No broken tows or anything to fuel some patient’s sense of humour. We sincerely hope so.
Almost one third into this letter and I haven’t said much; just filling up the space, just killing time.
Time. That’s it. We will talk about time. Now, after the end of another spectacular Tour de France, I suddenly have so much time to myself. But what is time, and why does it not give more of itself, or wait for us, or stop occasionally?
Nobody knows why and nobody knows what time really is.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines time as "a nonspatial linear continuum in which events occur in an apparently irreversible succession."
The Oxford English Dictionary defines time as "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future, regarded as a whole."
What?
And I thought it was only the stuff that I never have enough of? The stuff that drags me back home after a long cycle session, the stuff that makes an evening with friends fly into history, the stuff that makes fun disappear and pain lasts for a seeming eternity.
How much time do we have? Time; for anything, not just for life itself? Do we know and do we appreciate the time lent to us for a given aspect of your life or a moment in your life?
We all know how relative time can be; ten minutes left in the game when your team needs to score 1 more point to win goes a lot quicker than ten minutes left of the sermon when your eyelids feel like two trapdoors.
We are brought up to wish time away. From childhood, in fact, especially during our earlier (for some, much earlier) days, we are forever looking forward to something, always wishing for the holidays to begin, hoping that the time will come to go to high school, later on it is a matter of cannot wait for little Johnny to start walking and talking. Of course, after some time we realize that we have a child with wings and the voice of an angel and that he never stops asking questions and never slows down to even a mild blur, then we tell him to sit still and shut up. (Or we wish the time away for him to go to school to give us a little bit of peace and quiet?)
Point is; how much time are we allowed in our lives? And why do we never stop and make time work for us, instead of being a slave of something like time; who eventually leaves you, literally, dead in its tracks?
“How”, you ask me? “Now”, is my answer.
Do it now. Stop your clock! You can’t stop the Greenwich Time, but you sure can stop your ‘own time’. You cannot make time or take away time, remember it is a linear continuum and it stops for no-one. The trick (and I’m absolutely NO expert), is to go with the time-scale and not try to jump ahead of the clock by rushing headlong into everything.
We rush and fuss, we torment and cry, we toil and boil, all in vain trying to beat the linear nature of time.
King Solomon (970-928 BC) wrote: "There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven” … and we all know the rest of the famous verse. So much wisdom, just think about it; in today’s life where there is never enough time for everything, could this verse still be true?
I say “yes”. All we have to do is to make a list like Solomon did in the Bible. If you find that there are way too many things for the time allowed, you have a choice. Make time or cut the list in half. Yeah, by now it is evidently clear that only one of the two is possible. So?
I’m cutting my list. My new list will fit into the time allowed;
I will stop trying to stretch time to fit the list.
Wow, what time is it? OK. Just kidding.
Time for Staff news.
And now, it is time to go. Remember, cut the list. Also remember to get a Polio vaccination if travelling to Namibië or Botswana.
Greetings from the chronometer,
Pieter & Renette Naudé. (Count how many times the word Time appears in any article. Time is no-one’s fool, indeed.
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