Clocks

Not the song by Coldplay! But I do like Coldplay. “Look at the stars, see how they shine for you. And they were all yellow.” I know that is not Clocks, but Yellow. I also know that I have digressed too far. Back to the subject at hand. Clocks.

I was watching a Penn State game the other night and it was a very close, back and forth game. Toward the end, the clock became very important. Would Penn State have the time to mount a come from behind drive? If they do, will Purdue have the time to come right back with one of their own.

Sometimes you will have an appointment and traffic slows and you are not sure if you will be on time. You are driving and keeping an eye on the dashboard clock. You are trying to remain chill and patient, but what if this appointment was an interview. Keep watching that clock, as if that will make it slow down. Most of you readers know that I am a baby boomer and realize that younger generations will not understand this paragraph at all. Not that they don’t have job interviews, but that an 8:00 appointment means anywhere between 7:50 and 8:20. Prove me wrong!

Another vital clock is a woman’s biological clock. That urge to have a child is built into most women. Life only gives each of them so many childbearing years. And even within those years, the later ones are riskier for having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. Being a man, I can only imagine what that biological clock is like. Being a counselor, I have been privy to many tales of that incessant natural clock. Having become a father at the age of fifty, I realize I will never fully understand.

Lastly, The dreaded clock of life. We only get so many days. The Moody Blues say 22,000. That countdown clock begins ticking the minute we are born. We don’t really think about that ticking when we are young, because a lifetime is forever. When we hit forty, the thought sneaks in that the ticking is getting louder. I turned seventy in May. Some days I don’t hear the birds singing, nor the brook babbling, nor breezes rustling through the trees. Instead, all I hear is that damn life clock going tick tock, tick tock, TICK TOCK! Luckily most days aren’t like that. My life is devoted right now to keeping those ticks and tocks as quiet as possible. But even on the best day ever, in the background there is always that incessant click, click, click of seconds passing by.

I’ll end this post with another Coldplay reference. Viva la Vida. I used to rule the world!