Did you ever wish you could apply some brakes to time? Have you ever spent a gratifying day with a friend, a loved one, or doing something you really enjoyed on an unsurpassed summer day? Toward the end of that day, did you wish you could freeze your life in it for a very long time? 

I can recall thinking after one of those days, “well, now that the weather is as it should be, could it stay just this way every day.” It never does. The world turns, the winds blow, machines break down. Things in our life are in constant flux.

One of the interesting things I have noticed about myself is the older I get the more I appreciate time I can spend with children. I love their innocence, their enthusiasm, their excitement from new (for them) things which I have known about for a long time. Along with this I have wanted those little people to remain as small children, clinging to my hand as we walk across the street, paying rapt attention as I read a story to them. They pay attention and are endlessly fascinating in their cute ways.

During my life, I have seen so many children become adults (which I still enjoy), and I feel a bit of loss that they are no longer children.  Life seems to move so fast and it seems that children grow up too fast. I thought about this recently and came up with some ways we can stop time and re-experience it in heart-pleasing detail.

Most people seem to have phones that have a camera feature and I’ve noticed many use them to chronicle the growth of their children. My wife’s youngest son and his wife have a three year old girl and now a months old baby boy. My wife received a digital picture frame from her sons for Christmas a few years ago and they and their wives now send pictures of themselves and their activities to it so we have constantly changing pictures in a frame for us to enjoy. Pictures and videos are a wonderful way to freeze the way children looked and acted at those certain moments in time. One might even say with a camera we can do more than slow life down, we can actually apply brakes at special moments in our lives.  

Another feature many phones have is audio sound recording. How precious are the voices and sounds of children. As the child matures, his or her voice changes. What a wonderful abilitiy we have to freeze the sounds of their voices right now. Isn’t it a treat to hear special people’s voice when they are not around.  One voice I would dearly love to hear again is the sound of my late mother. Using our phone’s voice recorder is another way we can temporarily stop the movement in time

Also, I have adopted the practice of keeping a journal of each day’s activities. It’s a way to stop life in words so I can go back and relive my experiences. It’s also an aid to memory when certain parts of an experience can’t be recalled. Journals are yet another way we can freeze bits of time and look back at them in the future.

Getting back to the children, another practice is to get down to their level and play with them. I think it is common knowledge that children learn about life through their play. When we get down to their level, listen and play with them, we may be helping them learn something about life and, at the same time strengthening the connection with them. 

The song “Turn Around.” by the Kingston Trio, written by Alan Greene, Harry Belafonte, and Malvina Reynolds has these lyrics

Where are you going, my little one, little one? 

Where are you going, my baby, my own?

Turn around and you’re two. Turn around and you’re four.

Turn around and you’re a young girl going out of the door

The swiftness of life can seem dizzying at times, but we have some tools to halt and relive the good parts, or even the bad parts we’ve made it through. We have phone cameras, phone audio recordings and journalling to apply the brakes for the special times of our lives.