Taking a gap year....or 33

Today was postgraduate graduation day at the University where I work. The bells were ringing out (literally; this University has royal ties, and they ring bells from the Queen's Tower on campus on several occasion days throughout the year) and a huge marquee was laid out on the lawn. It brought back fond(ish) memories from my own graduation (I am slightly disturbed by the number of years that have since passed) and the huge sense of relief I felt at it all being over. It also made me feel like donning a black gown and running around on the grass pretending to be Batman, like I did on my own graduation. Oops...did I say that out loud?

Among the afternoon's graduates was Brian May of rock band Queen fame, who finished the doctorate in Astrophysics he started in 1971 in October 2007, after a 33-year interruption of studies. Apparently, while recently co-writing a children's science book with astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, he discovered that very little research had been done in the 30+ years that have passed. Still having all his original thesis notes in the attic, he went back through his research and wrote up his findings. It's pretty cool that he bothered to go back and finish. But what I find more interesting is the fact that little had changed in the intervening years.

I wonder what life would be like if we could take interruption from certain aspects of it? To just pause certain parts until we were ready to deal with them, or put things on hold until the time was right? How many situations or relationships could we have such a break from, go back to and pick up right where we left off? People are constantly growing and evolving. However, there are ways you can grow and mature without fundamentally changing who you are as a person. There are some friendships that stand the test of time, despite infrequent contact, distance separation and general life getting in the way. Some relationships out-grow you, some grow with you and some you out-grow. I suppose the key is identifying which are which.

Sometimes a break from a situation or a person is a good thing. It gives you space to think, room to breathe, time to deal with the other issues that have pushed it to the periphery. But there always seems to be the danger that if you leave things too long, too much will have changed in the interim to the extent that you can never return to the ways things were. There is a positive and negative side to it - either the dynamics change for the better and things are different in a good way, or the balance is completely thrown and can't be restored.

Time doesn't wait for us. As much as 'taking interruption' from life sounds a good idea, timing is generally always going to feel 'inconvenient' or 'wrong' to at least one person involved in any given situation. Plus, the way you feel during a situation, especially regarding timing and whether or not it is right, isn't always the way you feel when the situation has passed or resolved. After all, hindsight is a beautiful thing. Furthermore, without God's complete, non-linear and all-knowing view of chronology - past, present and future as a whole never ending or beginning eternity - one cannot ever really comprehend the notion of the "right" or "opportune or seasonable time", also known as kairos, the Greek word for this specific sense of time, as my girl KM explains here (or see Wikipedia).

In the brief moments that I have been given thus far, I hope to have cultivated at least a few relationships that will stand the test of passing seasons, even if life does get in the way and I want to take interruption (or others want to take interruption from me, understandably, lol) for a while. Caring and being there for others unconditionally ain't easy, that's for sure. Maybe I need a little break to think about this. Can we check back in 33 years?