"The trouble is, you think you have time!" Jack Kornfield

© Zeferli

Sunday Morning Reflections started as a weekly post where I allowed myself, with a lot of encouragement from some readers, to go completely off track. Well, this morning I woke up obsessed about time. It was 6:05 am on the clock, and as I lied in bed I found myself trying to figure out where time keeps disappearing to.

• Molly the Wonder Dog turns twelve today. It would be another eight weeks before we picked her up, but I can't figure out how it's all gone by so fast!
• This past week I Skyped with my good friend Simon Barnard. Simon was my counterpart when he was president of Hasselblad UK and later Hasselblad Europe. It's been thirty years since we first met via fax and later at a meeting in Sweden. We lost touch over the last few years, but caught up thanks to Facebook. We talked for almost ninety minutes, taking one trip down Memory Lane after another.
  

• It's been almost ten years since my ex-wife and I started the process to separate and divorce; 8 1/2 years since I left Rangefinder and WPPI to start my own company; and just under 5 years since I started this blog.

One thing I've noticed as I get older, time disappears faster and faster. All of those trite sayings about how you never have enough time, etc. couldn't be more true.  It's a cruel reality when you finally accept the sand in that hour glass is running out and mañana is really today!

Time is free, but it's priceless.
You can't own it, but you can use it.
You can't keep it, but you can spend it.
Once you've lost it, you can never get it back.
Harvey MacKay

You'll never be able to stop time, but as artists you do have the ability to freeze special moments and create tangible memories for yourself and clients. In a way, time is what photography is all about. For example, in response to this week's new "Why?" with Kay Eskridge, Pat Fleischman wrote:

"I look at our group of silliness in our beach portraits every day! Always wall worthy, the glance reminds me of great times...recorded in print. Our faces look older now & the reflections in the mirror aren't as kind as the 15 years that has past! But, Kay's "magic" gives us just that, years of beautiful reflections that bring us back to our younger years..."

And there you have it, photography found a way to sneak into a Reflections post. Stop wasting time procrastinating on things you want to do. Put your fears of change in the back seat and let your dreams ride shotgun! And stop watering dead plants - give yourself permission to move on from the challenges in life you can't change.

Wishing all of you a day filled with passion, peace and all the things that make you smile from the inside out. Passion is the gatekeeper of the quality of your life. As you go for those eleven-second hugs with people most special to you, think about how important time is...not the past, but each moment you want to savor in the future. You'll never stop time, but you can slow it down enough to not miss a moment.

Happy Sunday!