For much of our lives, the image we have in our minds of ourselves is somewhat timeless. Sure, we use phrases like “hour,” “year,” “decade,” “back then,” “when I was a kid,” and “when I grow up”… but these words and phrases are often just the machinery of language and when it comes our personal identity, time is seen as something we spend rather than something that is us.

This is how things remain for years… then strangely, one day it arrives, and things change, or more accurately, “change” becomes apparent.

In deep history, this moment may have rarely come to our ancestors, either because they did not live long enough to accumulate much time or because their world offered very little opportunities to view past images of themselves. For our ancestors, their images were only seen in-the-moment, a reflection from still water or some shiny object.

In our day, this moment comes plainly. If it has not happened for you it will. One day we observe our picture (just taken) and we see the fingerprints of time plainly upon us. If those fingerprints are not instantly clear they become so upon reference with a photo from years past. The hair grayed, the wrinkles set, the ears and nose ever growing… all of these fingerprints now evidence of a face that has met many sunrises.

This moment is a moment of reckoning. However, it need not be one of sadness or regret… after all, it is a moment many of those before us never had the opportunity to experience. It is a moment that evidences our good fortune in having come this far. It is a moment that should bring a new appreciation for each passing moment in the NOW.

For the NOW I am thankful. Thankful for every wrinkle and fingerprint Time has placed upon me, happy to remain a canvass upon which the hands of Time will create until my creation is finished and in that moment of completion my worth will be known, and then (as now) Me and that Moment will vanish in an instant into the making of this beautiful world, a world full of fingerprints.