What is Time?

What is time? Is it a memory? A future? A moment?  I watch my daughters grow, faster than I ever imagined possible.  I have been capturing moments of time with my camera.  Though I still do not know exactly what is time.

There are moments when the experience within it can bring tears to my eyes. Tears of joy, sadness, awe, appreciation, love.  Is time a perspective?  When I have too much of it without purpose, I feel empty.  Or, when I do not have enough of it I feel overwhelmed.

As I write this, I am on the road, having flown our ISG team to Fayetteville, North Carolina on an overnight.  I am away from Chris and the girls, therefore I have time alone.  This would be an example of too much time, but in a place where the only purposes I can conjure are work or relax.

Tonight I brought myself to a movie, Twisters.  I was the only person in the theater, which creeps me out because I spend as much time watching my back and the exits, as the movie, but that is how I am wired.  The time, though, was relaxing. No E-mails, no work, no mowing, no thinking about or managing the ranch, no real life really.  It was like it was an excerpt from time.  Is that what relaxing is… a pausing of time or a fulfilling perspective of it?

These last almost eight years I have been a pilot, I feel like time has plugged away at a constant rate for my daughters but somehow Chris and I are not older.  But then those time snapshots I talked about, also known as pictures, show me differently.  We have more wrinkles and grey hair and memories.

Time is something I feel like I can’t touch.  The view was beautiful today from 33,000 feet in the Super King Air.  I remember the moment when I thought, “I have to capture this moment in time.”  Time. It’s slippery.  One moment I think I have it worked out and the next I realize that I am three loads of laundry behind yet many more important people, things, animals require my time, more.  So, by tomorrow’s yesterday, there may be a fourth load.

That leads me to talk about what is truly important to us, to me, to use my time perspective.  I abhor looking back on how I used my time and being disappointed in my decisions for the use of it.  Writing to you good humans is an example of something I have missed.  I spent years focused on building my ratings and aviation career along with my marriage and raising my kids, while living on a huge property that sucks my time like a leech.  Kids and spouse are where I like to focus time.  Now, my career is established.  I am the chief pilot for a company I believe in, flying a team I enjoy working with.  I have been thinking about our family 5-year plan.  What do I what?  What do we want?  How do we want to spend our time?  Time, that slippery sucker.

I have learned enough that I know if I am not intentional about how I want to spend it and whom I want to spend it with; five years from now, more of it will be gone and wherever it goes, I will not be able to get it back.

I recently sold my Decathlon “Blue”.(No one cry. I bought it for my business Blue Lakes Aviation. With COVID having changed the trajectory of my career, I did not need it anymore; not to mention not having time to fly it yet still pouring money into it, was a grief generator) Therefore, now that my career is established, that focus can move from aviation to something else I enjoy. My friend called it a hobby.  You should try saying it, Hobbbeeeee.  I nearly consulted Webster’s because I forgot what it meant.

I said, “Like getting my master’s degree?”

“No, something done for pleasure. Get a new hobby Aura. And it cannot be aviation or horses, you already have those.”

Here I am, pondering the definition of time, with you, from the cozy lobby nook of my hotel, watching all sorts of humans, families, business people and puppy dogs check in, wondering what they are doing with their time to bring them here, and what I want to do with my time over the next five years.

I would like to attend as many of the girls’ athletic events, band concerts and plays as possible.  I want to be there for them for the late-night bedtime conversations when they pour out their thoughts on life. I want to grow closer to Chris than even these 20 years have brought us.  I want to find ways to streamline time-leeches.  

You know how we were told growing up that even the light on our VCR draws electricity and raises your bill? ( People younger than me, ask your parents what that is).  Whether or not that was true, that is how I feel about the lack of intentionality.  My time WILL go somewhere.  If I am not intentional, that too is a choice.  Let me be more specific.  We will live in our house likely until one of the girls wants to buy it on the ranch.  It is a very large house that beautifully meets our needs right now.  And, we have SO. MUCH. STUFF.  I want to minimize now, so I don’t have to clean it, maintain it or pay for it for years and years to only realize later that I wasted my precious time or someone else’s if they have to clean it out later… what a burden.

Another time-leech example is our lawn.  We mow a lot of lawn.  It takes about four hours, every time we mow. That is not including the weed whacking afterward to make sure it all looks perfect, or the cost of fuel or the time it takes to drive the gas tanks into town to refill them.  Last year my parents (mom and stepdad) who live across the highway just down the road from us, did the unthinkable.  They stopped mowing three acres of their land.  They only mow and keep up the area around their house.  At first, it was ugly and I secretly thought they were crazy (surprise Mom and Bob, I thought you were crazy)!  Now, it is beautiful prairie.  It is picturesque.  And they have invested that time with their grandkids, eating family meals together and sitting on the couch together and visiting.  It is beautiful.

Why am I telling you all of this, other than that you are my only company in this hotel right now and I like pondering topics with you?  Because I can’t get the quality time I want without unplugging, putting away and refusing to dust the stupid VCR.  Therefore, when you drive by Austin Acres, Railview Peruvians, our house or anything else you want to call it; I invite you to see the in-between ugly growth stage of a few intentionally uncut areas and instead of  thinking bad thoughts, think “Wow, they must really be happy and intentional about their time!”  I am so excited about the thought of having a “meadow” (it’s not even a half acre, haha!), that I bought 27 end-of-season perennials that Chris and I planted on Labor Day.  They are going to be SO pretty a long time from now and attract the birds and the bees and all things pretty, including our thoughts about how much time we saved and get to intentionally invest elsewhere.

If you are not able to answer for me “What is time?”, then I invite you to answer for yourself how you can brighten your life by streamlining the time-leeches and be intentional with how you want to spend it?

Thanks for spending time with me tonight.  I am going to file three flight plans for tomorrow.

This is Aura signing off.  Peace. Out.