A reflective meditation on time, memory, and the meaning we create through the lives we share.
By Rev. George Korda | Photograph by Nathan Sparks
Appeared in Cityview Magazine, Vol. 42, Issue 1 (Jan/Feb 2026)
O
ops—there it goes. Or does it? Is time slipping past us, or are we the ones slipping through time? And while we’re at it, is it time itself we’re thinking about, or the magazine TIME? Either way, you’re here with Cityview now, which means this small piece of my time has crossed paths with yours.
As you read—glancing at the photographs, noticing the work of people in this community—what has been going on in your own life? Have you taken even a second to pause and consider the time someone took to notice this city, to view it? We rush through hours as though they are chores, but they shape us in ways we rarely stop to see. And if we aren’t careful, time becomes a consumer, and we become what it consumes.
Since retiring—since my body started sending subtle hints that its warranties may have expired—I’ve realized how much time is something more than a clock on a wall. I’ve spent my life around clocks, and more since retirement, even the old grandfather kind. (I still wonder why there’s no grandmother clock—another story for another issue.)
All of us have clocks going off inside us every day. The one that wakes us. The one that guides our morning rituals. The one that reminds us to rest, even though most of us don’t rest very well. Slowly, over time, I’ve begun to see how much the shaping of my days is influenced by things I never fully acknowledged.
For twenty years, I worked in mental health and psychiatric hospitals, and people often ask why I spent so much of my life with those who were emotionally troubled. My answer is simple: people struggling with life are, in many ways, just like me. As Pogo once said, “I have met the enemy, and it is us.” The truth is that what I choose to do with my time is ultimately about me—and what you choose to do with yours is about you. But none of us live that time alone.
Some people disturb us. Some lift us. Some meet a need we didn’t know we had. Some we love so deeply they reorder the entire purpose of our lives—our wives, husbands, sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. Our families. The time we give them often means more than the time we give to our work. Difficulties come when work tries to define who we are, or when it starts to consume us, another word our culture has come to use far too easily.
You are giving your own time right now by reading this. And Cityview is unique in that you can feel the time people put into it. I’m grateful you’re still here with me.
In these past few years—now at age 87—I’ve realized how much I still don’t understand about myself or how I use my time. I continue to talk with others about their struggles, though I’ve never cared for the word counseling and what it has come to imply. People come because life is difficult, and I listen because they teach me.
A woman I saw 25 years ago found her way back into my life recently. And just a few weeks ago, a young woman of 20 called to see if I would meet with her. I said I would, though I had no memory of seeing her sister, whom she claimed I’d spoken with recently. After we met, she told her mother she’d seen a counselor. The mother said, “That sounds like the person your father and I saw before we divorced. You were four years old.” As it turned out, she had simply gotten my number by mistake.
Yet here she was, talking through the very same questions her parents wrestled with years ago. Time hadn’t erased anything—it had simply followed her, just as our own pasts follow us.
Time may seem to pass, but we carry every bit of it forward.
May we learn a little more about who we are in this time of our lives wrestled with years ago. Time hadn’t erased anything—it had simply followed her, just as our own pasts follow us.
Time may seem to pass, but we carry every bit of it forward.
May we learn a little more about who we are in this time of our lives
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