Time is flowing like a river ...

You can't turn back the clock, but you can wind it up again.
- Bonnie Prudden

I had never heard of Bonnie Prudden when I first read this quote the other day, but I loved the words, as they can interpreted in several different and very satisfying ways. I Googled her name and discovered she is the originator of myotherapy, which I gather is a kind of massage therapy for muscle pain and dysfunction. Knowing that adds yet another dimension of meaning to her quote.

You can't turn back the clock ... I can't go back in time, I can't do over what's already been done, I can't do what I didn't do in season. There are a lot of things we humans have control over, but the flow of time is not one of them. Oh, I can control and am responsible for what I do with my time, but there's nothing I can do to make time go faster or slow down or stop altogether. At least in this life we are subject to its laws. When I don't accept this fact, I am maladjusted to reality. Thus, the first part of the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change ...

But you can wind it up again. I don't have control over everything, but I do have control over a lot of things -- such as how I respond to what gets thrown at me. Things will run down, get used up, be over, but they don't have to stay run down, used up, and over. We can renew our lives. True, physical youth leaves and doesn't come back, but other, wonderful things come in its stead. I can renew my relationships, my knowledge, my experiences and my general experience. I can not only wind up, but actually rev up, my spiritual life. The courage to change the things I can ...

A couple of years ago I turned 40 years old. It was weird -- still is -- to think of myself as being in my forties; I had just barely gotten used to the idea of being in my thirties! Perhaps my soul is an eternal 26-year-old. And yet, I do not regret my age. I don't mind saying how old I am when people ask, and I don't use "anti-aging" creams and such. I have a few gray hairs I am not considering dyeing. I am actually disappointed when people say I look younger than I am; I want to look 42! Though I lived a lot of great things in my youth, I wouldn't go back and do it again -- not now, not when I know the beginning of the insight of maturity. And the wisdom to know the difference.

I don't think I would turn the clock back even if I could. I do want to keep winding it up, though, for a while yet.


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Writer's Challenge goal for April: 15,000 words // Words so far: 1,342