I remember reading that somebody once said ‘there are only
two kinds of time: time to waste and time that is running out’. I forget where
I read this but it seems true to me. When you’re travelling, you get to
experience both kinds quite a lot. You move seamlessly between them and they’re
both sweet and sour in their own right.
Time to kill can be a beautiful thing:
lounging around in hammocks, lying on beaches, soaking up the fact you have
nothing pressing to be doing. No decisions to make or deadlines to meet.
Nothing to do but to sit and just be. Or if you’re feeling particularly restless,
to read a book, listen to music or look out the window of the bus or train and
watch these strange, foreign landscapes unfold before you.
Of course, you get
the bad kind of time to kill too: waiting around for that bus, train or plane
in the no-man’s land of waiting rooms and stations. But you take solace in the
fact that there isn’t really anything you can
do. So you wait.
As for time that is running out, it seems to me that you can
look at it in two ways. Either you focus on the fact that you don’t have the
time to do all the things you want, and end up getting frustrated and
disappointed. Or you can look at those remaining hours, days or weeks in terms
of potential. So you can’t do everything you want, but this is the case in life
in general. So fill that time with as much as possible, cram in as much as you
can do, because time you are short of should be sweet in its value as a
diminishing commodity.
