Wider Horizons

​​In preparing this issue of Wider Horizons, I have been thinking a lot about time. That’s not too surprising, I suppose, as I had the pleasure of getting to know Steve Christensen, a Lethbridge College grad who turned his love for interesting watches into an innovative enterprise, for our cover story. In the process, I spent hours learning and writing about timepieces, and thinking about just what it is they track.

Time is such a funny thing. I remember summer days of my childhood that seemed to last forever, and long nights with sick babies where the minutes felt like they took far more than 60 seconds to pass. Turbulent airplane flights, the last hour of a long road trip, even the occasional work meeting – all are instances where time seems to slow down to an agonizing pace.

But far more frequently, time seems to speed up and now passes too quickly. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I arrived for my first day of work at Lethbridge College. But it’s been more than six years – and 19 issues of Wider Horizons – since I first walked through the sliding doors of Centre Core. And it doesn’t feel like it was much longer than that that our family of three arrived in Canada on a hot July afternoon with every possession in the world packed in our sky blue Toyota and a moving van. But the calendar says that was nearly 15 years ago, and our family now counts five. If I close my eyes, I swear I can still feel the weight of my firstborn in my arms, all eight pounds, six ounces of him, his head nestled in my left elbow and his feet in my hand. But that baby is now six feet tall, soon to be taking his driver’s exam. Beyond that – years but surely not decades ago – I can picture myself in a newsroom on election night, in a bar with friends and only a dog to worry about at home, and in a U-Haul with my husband, the day after our wedding, finding the way to our centre city Philadelphia apartment where great adventures (and a few cockroaches) awaited us.

And maybe just a few more years past that (but certainly not the 24 years the calendar says), I can picture myself at the moment that more than 600 current Lethbridge College students will be experiencing – crossing the stage at my college graduation. I can almost smell the beautiful leis that the parents of a friend from Hawaii had brought for their daughter and her friends and feel the bubbles in my nose as our gang toasted each other with champagne.

I want to tell the soon-to-be-grads to stop time on that day, to look around and indulge every one of their senses so that, as their lives speed up with each passing year, they can return easily and happily to that moment, to those friends who became family, to those instructors who helped them see just how much they could do, to the place that, for a year or two or more, became their home. I want them to freeze the memory of the smiles on the faces of the friends and family who love them so much, and who are so proud of them at this moment.

I know we can’t stop time. But for the Class of 2018, my wish for you is to truly savour this exciting moment. Congratulations on your success, and best wishes for the future – which will be here before you know it!

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Lisa Kozleski, Editor

Wider Horizons
By Lisa Kozleski, Editor
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