"only so much time:" pondering on gregorio brillantes' "faith, love, time and dr. lazaro"

“…Like love, there was only so much time” is a line that reassures one of the ample moments for important things. Anything rushed consumes time that is always just not enough. That is why there is no adequate time for cramming during exams, shuttling late for work, getting trivialities done through multitasking—activities that are, admittedly and relatively, less significant than spending quality hours with one’s family, bonding with friends, or communicating with God. The latter activities can be savored with so sufficient time that it becomes practically a sin for one to invoke being dead busy,for instance, just so one can skip doing these important rituals.
Certain things cannot be hurried. There is only so much time to spend anticipating the sunrise with one’s beloved, expecting a baby inside a mother’s womb, or watching one’s kid take the first baby steps. These are the very moments that seem to be framed forever because they matter most. They are so precious to one enough to make that one wish that there were seconds, minutes, hours more before the moments expire. Every opportunity available will be called forth in order to delay the ending, because happiness gets embodied not in the end but in the duration of the moment itself. One affects happiness not when the sun has risen but when one, together with the beloved, is anticipating the sun’s rising. Not when the fetus is finally ejected into the world, but when the mother’s womb is growing full while the baby inside is nourished with food and love. Not when the baby finally reaches the finish line for his early steps, but when he slowly goes about, tumbling almost, in his first attempt to walk along the world.
Yes, the end is inevitable, and while one cannot make the world stand still to freeze time, it is the fullness of a life that lends the magic of seemingly prolonged moments. To cite an example, it is not important how many years one has invested in love since that cannot be the basis for that love’s greatness. Time may be fleeting, but in the brief minute that one has shown one true act of love:sacrificing materially or emotionally for one’s beloved, caring for the sick, looking after the welfare of the elderly, needy or weak, and the like—that is when life’s fullness comes into existence, when there is so much time.
Certain things indeed, when done considering the non-wasting of precious fractions of a lifetime, can transform into eternity.