Make A Change Blog: “[Cinderella] heard the clock strike eleven and three-quarters … and hurried away…” “Cinderella” by Charles Perrault

There are certain specific events when we are most conscious of time passing: New Year’s Eve, our birthdays, our children’s first day of school, the deaths of our parents. In the background, we hear the clock chiming, and the sound fills us with awareness. Like Cinderella, we know we must hurry.

While it is important to recognize these major life events, we should not focus on them as what we’ve lost never to regain. This turns time into our enemy, stealing into our lives and taking away what is most precious.

Instead, we must view them as part of life’s continuum, a band of hours, days and years that stretches both ways—forward as well as back.

And while we need to make the most of what time we have been granted, sometimes the way to do that is to stop and enjoy the moment. Otherwise, we will lose our “glass slipper”—the joy of what is—because we are too afraid of losing what might be.

Make A Change Blog