Killing Time
How do I kill time?
Let me count the ways.
By worrying about things
over which I have no control.
Like the past.
Like the future.
By harboring resentment
and anger
over hurts
real or imagined.
By disdaining the ordinary
or, rather, what I
so mindlessly
call ordinary.
By concern over what’s in it for me,
rather than what’s in me
for it.
By failing to appreciate what is
because of might-have-beens,
should-have-beens,
could-have-beens.
These are some of the ways
I kill time.
Jesus didn’t kill time.
He gave life to it.
His own.
—Leo Rock, SJ, in Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits