IT'S THE summer holidays and we, like many parents, are trying to balance our work commitments with giving the kids some special time and memories.
So, I was sitting on the beach, trying to write emails on my phone while simultaneously watching my younger kids play. They asked me to join them but I said I was too busy.
They were throwing stones into the sea to make a splash, as I used to do at their age and, in truth, still enjoy doing.
I glanced down for a moment to pick up the ball for our dog, who is never happier than when chasing it. I paused and stared, as I noticed what was lying on the beach beside me.
The smoothed remains of a brick, perhaps once part of a house, or maybe from the wall of a factory or pit bath house. The seashells, empty homes of once living creatures whose adventures in the sea we can only guess at.
The sea coal, remains of an ancient forest, lost beyond our imaginings of time and transformed by millions of years in the ground, and after all this, somehow finding its way onto the beach to lie next to me.
Small bits of driftwood, in the form of blemished sticks; where did they come from?
How did they break from their mother tree, and how far had they journeyed before they arrived here, next to the fragments of pottery, polished and smoothed by age and water?
Were the pottery fragments once part of someone’s kitchen tableware? A treasured teapot now long lost? A plate thrown in anger? Or just discarded waste from the pottery, sculpted and reshaped by the sea?
Were the pieces of glass once a bottle thrown away after a night on the tiles? Or sent to sea with a message which never arrived because it was cast on the rocks?
And the stones and grains of sand – how many millions, or billions, of years are contained in their tale?
READ MORE: Tim's Tales: What if historic buildings could speak?
Perhaps belched from volcanoes, pressed by shifting continents, exposed and crushed by ice, transported by currents, then finally washed up on the Pans shore.
I picked up a handful of sand, stones, coal, glass, wood, pottery, seashells. My palm held a world of stories untold.
I was suddenly reminded of the famous opening lines of William Blake’s poem, ‘Auguries of Innocence’:
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour…”
The poem is much longer but it’s these first four lines which have become the most famous.
It’s a powerful idea – that the world can be contained in something as small as a grain of sand, and that we can hold infinity in our hand.
And hold eternity in an hour.
What did Blake mean?
I looked up at my kids playing, the sun sparkling on the surface of the sea. I felt the warm breeze on my face, the joy of still being alive. Yes still, in this moment; but how many more?
Our life is made up of such fleeting moments as this. But they are only fleeting if we fail to capture them and hold them dear.
When we do hold them dear, we can transform them and make them eternal for us. How to do this? Be truly present with joyful appreciation.
So I put the phone down and joined my kids.
We threw stones into the sea together, we did somersaults, or rather they did, and I fell down. We made wobbly towers of stones, and paddled in a still freezing sea.
When I said I was busy, what I should have said was: “I am prioritising something else I deem more important in this moment”.
These words would have been more honest, for saying we are busy is so often the excuse we give ourselves to deprioritise the things which, later in our lives, we realise were in fact the most important.
Like throwing stones in the sea with my kids to make a splash, rather than sending emails I could do later.
Our lives are a minuscule moment in the passage of time. Billions of years have passed before us and billions of years will come after. But contained within our minuscule lifespan is our world of fleeting moments.
They can fly by, barely remembered, or we can hold onto them, cherish them, remember them, make them part of our story by being present in them.
If we do this, we will have learnt how to hold eternity in an hour.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here