The most well-known statement about the fitness of time is from the biblical Book of Koheleth, better known as Ecclesiastes. The author, who prides himself on his realism and willingly admits the futility of most human effort, yet sees a pattern in human events that might argue for an over-arching Providence after all: “there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to laugh and a time to mourn,” and so on. One by one, he lists the extremes of human emotion and experience and declares that there is a right time for every single one.

I have no wish to quarrel with his summary. My focus is on lesser matters, although I could indeed riff on Koheleth in a dozen ways: There is a time to accept the particular miseries of this job and there is a time to begin looking for a different one; there is a time to take risks and a time to be cautious; there is a time to say no to an obstreperous toddler and a time to forestall needless anxiety by promptly meeting immediate needs. There is a time to vote Liberal and a time to vote Conservative—oh, dear, I was not going to summon up political debate!

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:

Ecclesiastes 3:1

 Several occasions and important dates in the last months have led me to look back on past decisions and consider whether I had indeed followed the advice of a good friend who once assured me that I would know when the time was right for a big decision if I paid attention. I would sense, deep within myself, when, for example, I should resign from some committee whose work had once given me pleasure and purpose, or when it was time to let go of possessions that had once been oh, so important.

 Actually, I’ve been inclined to think matters are more complicated than that. I can recall decisions that seemed shaped more by circumstances and urgent need than reflection, and careful planning wasn’t possible. There had been no time to ask myself if the time was right. Sometimes inclination urged me on, yet I faced only closed doors.

 That’s not where I am now. The path remains open – there’s no blocking gate. Yet within me, the conviction grows that it is time to say farewell to a part of my identity. As of the end of this year, 2021, I shall not be an editor any more, except of my own work (if one can call repeated revisions editing). It has been a pleasure to be of assistance, to take someone else’s writing and make it as smooth and persuasive as possible without altering either the intent or the voice of the writer. It has been a wonderful challenge to learn to “hear” the writer’s voice and then make it stronger, clearer. The frequent tussles with language, when the exactly right word proved elusive, were exhilarating, at least when the battle was over.

Editing is background work. Sometimes an editor is given public credit, sometimes not. In the academic world, where I have functioned, the one who polishes the conference paper, corrects grammatical errors, and makes the list of references conform to a journal’s specifications, is rarely mentioned. That’s as it should be. I have only tweaked the details of someone else’s work—that someone should get all the credit for doing the hard work of research, sorting through ideas, and writing (and re-writing at my behest).

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How is it that something that was once a pleasure, indeed still gives satisfaction, can become something that needs to be given up? I’m not sure. It seems to me that the motivation could be a range of circumstances from the changing nature of that something (a dance club that loses its sense of community through personality clashes, for example) to some change in me, the decider.

That the passage of time has something to do with it is beyond doubt. Each succeeding birthday has sharpened my awareness that time is not infinite. I do not have all the time in the world. Just as a summer of illness taught me that life is too short for me to read all the books I might imagine I wanted to read, or even to finish every book that I’ve begun, so the passing of ordinary time carries the lesson that not everything needs to be done, and certainly not everything needs to be done by me!

There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.

Guy Gavriel Kay

While retirement from teaching was not an issue over which I was granted as much choice as I might have wished for, I did learn over the subsequent months that it is indeed better to step out of the working life while one is performing well than to keep going until one has become incompetent and everyone else is waiting impatiently for the end of the ordeal.

My memories of my last teaching year give me much pleasure. It had been a very good year. Besides, I was now freed from the tyranny of ever-changing technology which I would have found harder and harder to learn. Already the gap between the way I thought and the ways my students thought was growing dangerously. It was time to learn how to be a grandparent instead of a teacher; grandparents are generally granted more tolerance and forgiveness.

 As I recall the rightness of that major shift in my life, I am more comfortable now about planning to give away my style manuals and grammar books. I shall delete files, I think, without wincing, but I’m not so sure about turning my business cards into grocery lists. Perhaps I’ll keep one or two as souvenirs? Still, it is time.   

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.

The Buddha