“Time flies! And, time is an experienced flyer!”
If you are like me, how people look at time drives you crazy! Time in and of itself is a finite concept. It is exact and unwavering in its essence. Five minutes is five minutes. There is no real variance on this. We all have 24 hours or 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds each day; no more, no less.
And yet...the unwritten rules that people live by have warped this sense of reality in many ways. Many times we act and live like we have all the time in the world.
Vince Lombardi is famous for his concept that if you are not 15 minutes early then you are late. Willie Davis showed up for one practice five minutes early and still had to pay a fine for being late!
When I was a high school band director, our protocol for every rehearsal and every performance was, “To be early is to be on time; to be on time is to be late; to be late is unacceptable.” It was understood that if a rehearsal was scheduled for 6:00 p.m. that meant we were actually starting the rehearsal at 6:00 p.m. and everything that needed to be done for that to happen was done earlier. It was accepted practice that if rehearsal started at 6:00 p.m., then drum majors and section leaders arrived 30 minutes prior, and regular members 15 minutes prior. We lived by that. We understood and respected the value of time. Now the other part of the story is, we made sure we planned out every minute of our rehearsal meticulously, and we always ended on time. As a result, we were all more responsible and accountable and our rehearsals more productive.
Any man who has had to wait for his wife to "get ready" for a date understands that a few minutes is really not a few minutes. And any women who has listened to a man say "the game is almost over, I'll be right there" recognizes that all of us work by different rules when it comes to time.
Soon, now, in a few, I'll be right down, on time, when I'm done are all phrases that impact how we act and interact with each other. They are different rules governed by our sense of time.
Do you know anyone like this.? Or, are you like this? If something begins at noon, they start thinking about leaving at noon. Or someone like this? If something begins at noon, they put it on their calendar to be ready to leave by 11:30 so they are there by noon. I think we all know people at both ends of this spectrum and everything in between. To one person noon means noon; to another noon means “noonish.”
It is not the difference in our perspectives that cause problems, it is the lack of recognition that these differences exist. Unwritten rules don't create conflict. It is that different people work by different rules.
So what is the solution?
Talk about it. Recognize that the rules you live by might be different than the rules governing their behavior. Understand that it is ok to be different and then plan accordingly. Remember you are not always right. Give grace and realize that doing right is always more important than being right. Learn to laugh at yourself and enjoy the differences.
Above all, enjoy your TIME together!