Slow Cookers and Other Snail-Paced Things

The passage of time is simply sensational. It heals, grows, dissolves, ages, marinates, ferments, and a whole heap of other amazing things. And you don't even really need to do anything for time to work its magic, though some tolerance can help time pass in your favor.

Many of my favorite things take time. I love a slow cooked anything and a glass of wine with an old friend. I love the anticipation of plans made in advance. I love looking through my scrapbooks. All of these things have a common vital component. 

Many people think of time as a thing you can't get back and they see this as a problem. Sure, but who would want it? The trick is to spend it and keep it like you know you can't get it back. It rewards you in return.

I was in Steamboat Springs recently. I had been skiing, drinking, listening to live music, smoking a tiny bit of that newly-legal green stuff. I paused briefly, really enjoying a moment, and realized the band was playing a song that had, just 12 months earlier, meant the opposite. It was a song of heartbreak, the usual painful country lyrics. One word seemed to resonate: salvage. That word had felt so negative and hopeless 12 months prior. Now it felt triumphant. This year, as I looked around at my incredible group of new friends, dancing and singing along with Turnpike Troubadours, with my new man's arm around me, a wave of gratitude for time and its constant movement forward swept over me.

My mom told me of a young person in my hometown who killed himself recently. How sad? We talked about how people don't always grasp that the enormity of a current situation is actually only a tiny fragment of the original. Making irreversible decisions without letting some time pass is a big, big mistake.

So often we simply need to wait a bit for everything to get worked out. And the extra time we allow makes it far superior. Like a nice 15 YO Scotch or a Golden Anniversary cake...hell, even a happy hour at the end of a hard work day, enjoy every minute, the process (as best you can) and the outcome.

Now, please remind me of this sentiment around the 20th hour of my painfully long flight to India. I said I love time, I never said I had patience.