The Busying of Life

"You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it."
-Charles Buxton

I have not the foggiest idea what Charles Buxton this quote is referring to. I found the quote in a poorly referenced book. There were several of that name in history. One of a beer brewer and entrepreneur. Another, whom I am inclined to believe is the Buxton quoted above, was a radical off-again, on-again Member of British Parliament in the early 20th century from World War I to the late 1930s. He would win his seat for a while then lose his seat and win it back again several times.

This Charles Buxton was a bit of a radical. For a while, member of the Liberal Party and later the Labour Party. He opposed both World Wars. In fact, he was one of the few voices in Parliament with the moral courage to advocate for a negotiated settlement with Germany that allowed everyone to save a little face while stopping the mass killings and not continue fighting to the bitter end so as to get an unconditional and humiliating surrender from the losers. Sadly, he was rebuffed, and lost his seat in Parliament over it for a time. 

This from a man who could not be accused of being a pie-in-the-sky idealist. He had been a special envoy to Bulgaria in late 1914 in an attempt to prevent the Europe from spinning out of control after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. He took a bullet in the lung by a Turkish nationalist for his trouble. He survived but suffered from lung problems the rest of his life because of it. 

Sadly, though Buxton was not presciently omniscient all the time. He was sent as a Labour Party observer to Russia in 1922 to see what this new regime that was calling itself the Soviet Union was all about after having toppled the Czar. He and the other British delegates were shown a model Soviet commune. Buxton later wrote a book on his experience entitled In A Russian Village which highly praised this model commune he was shown that he thought might be a model for Progress and the future. 

The problem was, he had been shown by Lenin and the Soviets what amounted to a Soviet Disneyland. While a trip to Disneyworld can be fun, it's not really based on reality. In actual fact, we learned after Communism fell and historians were given access to the Soviet archives that all the farmers at that pretend Russian Village were all deported to the gulags the minute the last British observer left. It was a fantasy, a sick charade, put on by the Soviets as propaganda to the Western observers, most of whom, like Buxton, bought it hook, line, and sinker, and went home and told the Western world what a marvel Lenin was working in this new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

One can, of course, partially excuse Buxton for his naivete. He spent time only in the bright lights of the Russian village and did not realize, like most of the West, the dark shadows and atrocities that had been unleashed by the Bolshevik Revolution. Sadly, only time allowed for a true accounting of the dread horror unleashed in the name of Revolution.

Time is a valuable commodity, something we have all to little of in this life. But, the opening statement is true: There is so little of it, if you want time, sometimes you have to make it. Time is like a diamond. If you want it, you have to carve it out of the rock, you have to mine it out of the depths. And when you have it, you must guard it, for it will be stolen from you. 

Time is also something you have to make. You can't buy time. You can buy other people's time, but you can't buy time for yourself. If the doctor says you have two weeks to live and there is nothing we can do about it, you can't buy a third week.  

But, I guarantee you, in those two weeks, you will make time. 

You will make time to call up your enemies and make peace if possible.

You will make time to get your house in order. 

You will make time to go to Confession. 

You will make time to ask for forgiveness of things done and left undone

You will make time to have your last favorite meal.

You will make time to do one last thing on your bucket list.

You will make time to call your friends and family and tell them you love them.

You will make time to say goodbye. 

You will make time to grieve.

You will make time to laugh. 

In the end, though, Charles Buxton was right:

You. Will. Make. Time.