Proposed New Greeting

Howzit? How are you? What’s up? How are you doing? These are some of the words we use when we first see someone. They are not only words of greeting; they also express a concern of your well being. The words are saying, “I care about you, worry about you, and I hope all is well with you. Well I have thought of a new way of showing these sentiments. The next time you greet someone that you care about, you can say, “How’s time going?” I will explain these cryptic words.

The passing of time is a refection of your life; the better your life the faster time goes by and thus the lousier things are the slower it passes. I think even Einstein would agree, even though his concept of time is vastly more complicated. In my use of the relative speed of time the determining factor is one’s own happiness not E=mc2. I can give you many examples of this phenomenon. Can you remember that perfect night with that perfect date? It wasn’t fair that time accelerated to make the night so short. You wished that the night would never end, but it did only too soon. (And where is that magical person now you might ask.) On the other end did you ever watch the clock as “pau hana” (finish work) approached. The more you watched the slower time moved forward. You were already walking out the door, getting into your car when your boss asked you if you had completed his recently assigned task. It was as if your mind or your boss’s was slowing down the hands of the clock through some psychokinetic force. Worse, ever had a sigmoidoscopy where time slows down so much you enter another realm of reality? It’s amazing how pain can distort the passing of time. If you don’t believe me, go get a long pin right now and….

Ever been so depressed that the only thing left in your miserable life was time and it was so dominant that you could hear each second beat in your mind as a slow pounding of a demon’s heart that threaten to overcome you. Suffering with every beat as if each is a blow to your psyche and it is, you yearn for another to pass but to what gain? After every beat there will be another. No “pau hana”, no summer vacation, no graduation day, no Christmas morning, just another beat of eternity. Nothing to do, unable to do except wait for the next second to pass you can only suffer until the thought strikes you. There is only one hope…but let’s not go there. There is always hope and a new day. As Kawahatsu Sensei says, “Recite arigato gozaimasu (Thank you) one thousand times a day.” The word has power to make things right. Life will get better. Time will speed up, become normal, may even become superfast. It can happen.

So the next time you see someone that you like ask him, “How’s time going? I hope it’s moving fast for you. Have a nice day.”