In 1395, English author and poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, known for writing The Canterbury Tales, The Knight’s Tale, and many other books and poems, and was dubbed by some, The Father of English Literature, once wrote a proverb, which has been quoted many times since he wrote/said it. It read, “Time and Tide wait for no man.” It was included in the Canterbury Tales, specifically Clerk’s Tale, and a variation of the quote was even used in a version of Charles Dickens’s, A Christmas Carol.

Translations of the quoted line have included, “If you don’t make use of a favorable opportunity, you may never get the same chance again,” and “People cannot stop the passing of time, and therefore should not delay doing things.”

Time is a unique concept. The word time can be categorized as a noun or a verb. Nouns are defined as persons, places, and things, yet time, the idea or concept of it, is not tangible. You can’t see, hear, smell, taste, or feel time, but time is real. We can also experience time, and measure it, but again it is not tangible. When put together its components can, and does, create minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia. Time has no specific beginning, and time has no end. We are merely guest occupants in whatever range of time that marks our longevity.

Our physical time on this earth is limited. That part of time begins when we’re born and it will end with our passing, whenever that may be. My span will begin with my year of birth (1953), then a dash, then the year of my passing (?). There is a lot of time that passes between those limits of our lifetime, and in that time, we are afforded many challenges, opportunities and blessings. Some have said that our lives are measured by what we’ve done/accomplished during the dash between life and death.

Think about it. Breaking it down, there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week, 365 and ¼ days (52 weeks) in a year, and however many years we will have in our lifetime.

An even finer breakdown tells us, that in every day we’ve lived, and the future ones we will live, there were/are those 24 hours that were/are made up of 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds. Each of the 7 days a week we’ve lived, and will live in the future, are/will be made up of 168 hours (10,080 minutes, or 604,800 seconds). Those weeks created months each one having been, are, and will be made up of 720 hours [43,200 minutes, or 2,592,000 seconds), (assuming 30 days a month)], and those months have, and will be, accumulated into years, [assuming 365 days a year, (totaling 8,760 hours, or 525,000 minutes, or 31,536,000 seconds)].

How many opportunities have we been afforded in our lifetime? How many of those opportunities have we taken, or not taken, advantage of in all those years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and/or seconds? How many chances have we been given? How many of those chances have we taken, or not taken, advantage of in our lifetime? How many times have we done things at the time we thought of doing them? How many times have we put things off? How many times have we said we’d do it tomorrow?

I have told this story many times. I once walked into a local watering hole, many years ago, and there was a sign that said, “Free Beer Tomorrow.” Being an imbiber of beer in my younger days, I decided to plan a trip there the next day, which I did, as did many others. When we got there, there was no free beer, but the sign was still up. Feeling like the little kid who was often asked by an older relative to “pull my finger,” I realized the message, and learned quickly that each promise of tomorrow never becomes real, because it turns into a today, and every today turns into a yesterday which is gone and can’t be brought back.

I used to tell my students that not using time to the fullest is stealing from yourself. It’s something that is unwantedly taken from you, by you, and unlike something that is replaceable, time passed can never be gotten back. I don’t know how many others from my generation have felt, in these twilight times of our lives, that minutes seem to pass as quickly as seconds used to, hours seem to pass as quickly as minutes used to, days seem to pass as quickly as hours used to, weeks seem shorter, months seem to fly by faster than before, and it feels like each New Years Day arrives much sooner than it felt in our younger days, and It’s not really a question of how much time we’ve been given in our lifetimes, but what we’ve done with that time. That will be what ultimately defines us.

All this being said, I’d like to make a wish for all of us. Starting this day forward, may we all renew our awareness of how special time is, and may each one of us use ours to the fullest. May our time be as precious as those special people in our lives, and more precious as the greatest possessions we could ever own. As we can’t stop the passing of time, may we all do as much as we can to always make it meaningful and happy to us, and to others, and may we all take advantage of that “free beer” today, because the sign may be taken down before we can. God Bless!