Time

Shopping.

The usual stuff gets tossed into the shopping cart with the groceries. I sometimes call the carts buggies. That is apparently something worth the scornful laughter of people who believe Southern speech is an evil to be stamped out.

Whatever.

Regardless of what you call that three wheeled menace (so named because one wheel is on its own little planet and it isn't ours), the grocery shopping must be done.

I was astounded to come around the corner and discover a rack filled with giftcards for virtually everything you could imagine and a few things I'd never heard of.

Yeah, I need to get out more.

But the wonderful options made me consider something.

When I was a kid, it seemed like Christmas and birthdays were a million miles away and that the joy of opening whatever had been given was a kind of kiddie euphoria that made life seem wonderful.

Now, I think that we have become so 'complex' in our thinking that the joys of simply being in the present with one another's lives are filtering away. We want to be part of what goes on, but only conditionally.

I want to give my family and friends something this year but am unsure how to package it.

I want to give them my time.

Time that is undiluted, where my mind isn't wandering off onto my reply or the pot roast in the crock pot.

Time that is unfettered by whatever my concerns are and, instead, is directed solely to what they need, they want and they feel.

Time that we can use to laugh and cry and share the minutia of THEIR life and times.

Time is the one missing ingredient in most relationships. We talk about nations and people, the most frequent casualty of the day is the time to build something lasting by spending real, one to one, face to face time that builds friends, families and nations into something greater and stronger than they were before.

While I can't possibly cough up the money to feed all the starving children or clothe every naked soul, I can give up the time to feed my friends and family with the time that they are starving for. I can clothe them in the attention and care that lets them know just how very important they are to me every single day.

And that doesn't require a gift card or a floating balance.