College Time

Two of my kids went off to college this month, one to his senior year, and one to his freshman year. Over their last two weeks at home, I keenly felt, not stress, exactly, but pressure to make the most of the rapidly dwindling time. So we took walks, played board games, watched movies, went to church, got into discussions about software development and politics and literature and video games and theology. I’m not certain to what extent my sons felt the same about their impending departure. (As Michael Gerson observed about sending his eldest to college, “He is experiencing the adjustments that come with beginnings. His life is starting for real. I have begun the long letting go. Put another way: He has a wonderful future in which my part naturally diminishes. I have no possible future that is better without him close.”) But we immensely enjoyed the family time together.

However, I’m not sure if the pressure of those last two weeks is entirely rational. Eighteen years times fifty-two-point-something weeks per year makes 938 weeks, if your child leaves for college on their eighteenth birthday. Who’s to say that the last two weeks are more valuable than, say, week 537? In reality, all time with people whom we love and who bring us joy is a gift from God; that just may not be at the forefront of your mind when you’re on week 537 and college seems so far off.

In reality, even 938 weeks is less than it may seem. Paul Graham writes,

Life actually is short. Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it’s impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.

And that’s without invoking the countless clichés about telling people you love them now because tomorrow may be too late, people can be gone before you know it, treasure your moments because you never know what the future may bring, etc.; these are no less true for being clichés.

If I’m not careful, these trains of thought can produce, not just pressure, but stress. Time is slipping away! Don’t waste it! Optimize, organize, plan, develop habits and routines and life hacks! Make the most of every week, day, hour! Make sure you have no regrets!

There’s wisdom here - we should be good stewards of all the blessings that God has given us, including time - but I’m not sure that this attitude of carefully scrimping and spending a finite resource is intended to be how we live as children of God. It’s a scarcity mindset - what we have is all we have, so use it carefully, because when it’s gone, it’s gone - but we serve a God of abundance, who loves us and chooses to abundantly shower blessings upon us. The Bible has plenty to say about the wisdom of recognizing our limited time in this life (Ps 90:10-12, James 4:14, Eph 5:16), but it also talks about spending our time richly enjoying the blessings of family (Eccl 9:9), food (Eccl 9:7), work (Eccl 2:24-25), and worship (Ps 84:10). I should prefer to drink deeply of God’s blessings now than worry about when they’ll pass.

And, ultimately, our time isn’t so limited after all. As C.S. Lewis observes,

[We] hope finally to emerge, if not altogether from time (that might not suit our humanity) at any rate from the tyranny, the unilinear poverty, of time, to ride it not to be ridden by it, and so to cure that always aching wound (‘the wound man was born for’)… For we are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. ‘How he’s grown!’ we exclaim, ‘How time flies!’ as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the very wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed: unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.

God “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist” (Rev. 21:4), because he has arranged all eternity with us in order to have enough time to show us his love (Eph. 2:6-7).