I love Facebook memories. I look at them every day. I love seeing my life rewound in the present. I also love seeing my friends reshare their memories.
What I don’t love, though, is seeing the phrase, “time is a thief,” posted alongside the memory. (I still love my friends who type it, and they still love me for my vehement counterargument.)
I understand the personified metaphor. Time slips into your home and your life to “steal” some of your most precious things. Your kids’ babyhood. Your own younger self with its perfect skin. Your treasured experiences with your kids when they’re little.
But if “time is a thief,” that implies that what’s gone has been robbed from you. That “time” is selfish and takes for its own gain. I can’t get behind that villainizing of time at all.
Yes, youth, your own and that of your children, is a certain period of time that passes quickly. And when photographs of chubby-cheeked babies with gummy smiles or videos of mispronounced words suddenly reappear before you are about to hold a graduation program featuring that very same child, you cannot comprehend how all that time has passed.
Take a moment. Maybe wipe away the tears. Let your continued breathing flip your view. You were LIVING all the days as that time passed. That’s NOT the work of a robber. That’s the beautifully giving and thoughtfully arranged work of a historian, a museum curator, or an antique collector. Or even a wealthy benefactor.
The only thief in life is death. Death is the real robber. Life is the most precious thing we have. It cannot be replaced.
I lost my father at 30. He was 69. He had just retired. He was several weeks shy of meeting his first grandchild. Death robbed him of ever getting to know what that new part of life would be like. Death robbed him of more years with my mother and the rest of his family.
Time, on the other hand, gifted him with so much. He lived fully. He traveled extensively. He collected degrees and new hobbies like baseball cards. He wrote a book. He learned multiple languages and studied Hebrew scripture each day. He read constantly. He would probably say that time is a librarian.
The other day, I learned that one of my past students died. She was 31. Death selfishly and unexpectedly took her. I read her obituary and learned all of the giving, fulfilling, and active things she had done since graduating high school. I can still see her in my classroom, tossing her head back and laughing with friends. Time was not the thief.
Time, the finite amount of it we unknowingly have, is glorious. The recounting of time is also a gift. It can be a gift that we look at wistfully, but it is not a thief.
And if you’re still reading, I hope I’ve convinced you to see your limited time as a new type of person. A positive one that you respect, hold close, and never want to forget.
If I haven’t convinced you and I scroll past your words, “time is a thief,” beside your latest bittersweet memory, I’ll simply sigh and know that I tried.
