Tsssss….tsssss….tsssss….

The soft, inaudible sound heard only by my soul. Each rhythmic patter a grain of sand falling through the hour glass of my life and hitting the pile below. 

Tsssss….tsssss….tsssss….

They fall quickly.  Often too quickly.  The busier my days, the faster the golden dune forms higher on the floor of the bulbous glass.  

So many grains.

So many moments, lost in the mound of what is past. 

Frantically , I wonder how to slow their descent.  This hour glass does not get flipped.  There is no do-over.  The sand falls until there is no more sand to fall. 

But there is a secret I’ve learned.

If I watch the grain pass through the tiny waist of the glass, if I study it, intent on its shape, its color, its size as it plunges…it will slow down. It’s as if the effect of the gravity this life emanates has a little less power.  

I take in the grain, the moment, and the act of recognizing it gives it power to defy the pull of time.  That moment now has a space, a place, a name.  The aimless, mindless moments fall too fast, but when I latch onto a moment, take it in, fade out the distractions, time jellies. 

I watch the golden grain float down.

Slowing them doesn’t always give them value. 

How do you give meaning to a grain of sand? 

How do you infuse purpose to paltry minutes spent in the car, or weeding, or cleaning a toilet, or running an errand, or sitting through a boring lecture, or making a meal?

Slow the moment, and as the drop defies gravity, I now have extra in the moment. 

Extra time to think. To listen. To speak. 

Not about things outside this moment.  Each grain of sand has value. Purpose.  A meaning that can only be found in focus. Distraction destroys it.  A busy mind breaks the spell and the moment of sand speeds to its final resting place, forgotten and lost to time.

Redeeming is my new task.  I feel its urgency.  The sands of the past lay where they fell, still and lifeless.  But there’s more slipping through the glass each day.  I see them.  My lazy self will let some drop in haste and indifference.

But I now know a secret, and I use it.

I brush tangles out of my daughter’s hair, a necessarily unpleasant task for her, and here I employ the power of my secret. One hand lightly holding hair, the other tugging a brush down its length.  Daughter babbles.  I listen.  Her hair getting silkier with every pass, I’m fully in this moment.  

Time slows.  

I brush.  

She talks about things that would have been nonsense to my ears, causing my mind to drift, but not this time. 

Time slows.

I listen.

And I hear her heart.  What makes her laugh.  Silly words that speak of deeper things.

Time slows and now this moment glows with meaning and purpose, the grain of time marked and redeemed as it drifts down into the glass to rest.