Whenever the secular year closes and a new one begins one of life’s simple chores is to change the pages of the desk calendar: out with the old in with the new.
But that is not so simple. To anyone glancing at my desk calendar during this month it is apparent that this is one chore I do not do well. Year in and year out I find dozens of creative excuses to postpone this simple task as long as possible. Perhaps it is the reality of time marching ahead and leaving me behind; perhaps all those pages drifting forlornly into the wastebasket elicit the gnawing realization that in the past 12 months I could have accomplished much more. Whatever the reason I delay defer put off hang back temporize. But here it is after Purim — time to bite the bullet.
My desk calendar of course contains not just one year but 365 separate pages. A certain melancholy overcomes me as I discard each of those pages for each one represents a separate entity. Some of them arouse happy memories: February 18 a bris milah. March 12 a bar mitzvah. June 22 a wedding. Throughout reminders of birthdays and anniversaries and graduations. But some are just onerous duties: April 15: reminder for income tax payment. June 11 a dental appointment. Other entries are sad: visits to the sick; shivah visits. On August 2 I visited good friend Joey in the hospital. Joey never made it out of there and on August 30 his funeral took place at 2 p.m. Was King Solomon in his Koheles (chapter 3) thinking about desk calendars when he wrote: “for everything there is a season … a time to laugh and a time to cry …”?
As the pages float downward I realize that what I am tossing away is nothing less than Time itself. One wants take hold of Time to arrest its inexorable forward march. Time and its many servants — clocks and watches and timepieces and alarms and calendars — surround us wherever we go controlling our every breath. Only the rare person has learned to master the master that is Time. And the only Timeless One is He for Whom “a thousand years are like a single yesterday” (Tehillim 90:4).
Create a free account to keep reading.
