Time depends on your relationships.

Take years, for example. Are you living in the year 2026? That depends on your relationship to the sun—but also history, geography, and religion. If you follow the Gregorian calendar with its reference to the birth of Christ and its adherence to the earth’s axis around the sun, then yes, you are living in the year 2026. But if you follow the Thai Buddhist lunisolar calendar and its reference to the death of the Buddha and its relation to phases of the moon, it is technically the year 2569. Devotion, ideas, geography, and astronomy all influence conceptions of time throughout the world.

Time depends on more than our relationship with the earth’s axis or the moon’s gravitational orbit. Our own times and seasons change as we grow and age and as our own “human orbits” expand, contract, and shift throughout our lives. Time also shifts as ideas about work, family, and distance change.

When I taught a survey global history class from the Renaissance to the present, I showed my students the 1565 painting The Harvesters by Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder to illustrate ways people in the past experienced time differently than we do today. The painting shows a day of harvesting in the lethargic heat of late summer. Some fieldworkers reap and gather the grain; others share a meal together; one man naps under a tree, open-mouthed. There are no wristwatches. There is no boss, telling the workers where to go or what to do. The only indication of time is the shadows of the trees, suggesting it is sometime in the early afternoon. Perhaps the nearby church steeple peals the hour, but most workers seem oblivious to the passing of time and are at home in their own bodies.

I don’t belong in the world of The Harvesters. Even putting aside the obvious fact that I am not a sixteenth-century Dutch peasant, my ideas about time, leisure, and busy-ness are far removed from that pre-industrial world. Instead, I relate more to the bustle of the panoramic scene of William Powell Frith’s 1862 narrative painting The Railway Station. Compared to The Harvesters, the scene Frith shows is an entirely different world. The Railway Station illustrates a post–Industrial Revolution world, powered by coal and structured by steel rather than by horsepower and wood.

The people in this painting are either going or coming; they move about in the hall of nineteenth-century order: the railroad. The locomotive changed the way time was conceptualized. It standardized times across countries and continents. In The Railway Station, the people congregate around a train, moving this way and that way, mimicking the way the modern era commodified time—their hurry, hurry, hurry shows that they value their time. They have places to go, people to see, time to spend. Everything revolves around the train that has forever changed conceptions of time, the body, and work.

I am a product of this nineteenth- and twentieth-century world of trains, ironworks, and viewing time as consumption. I view time as a commodity—something to hoard, something to lose. I am easily seduced by promises that I can “have it all,” as though time belonged to me. I don’t like that I think this way, but it’s hard to break out of such a mindset. The way I experience time has been socialized into my body; modernity’s demands on the Western woman have etched their way into my neurons. As such, I feel disconnected from my own body in relation to time. I cannot make peace with the time given me. I want more or less—the present eludes me.

I have often heard the adage that we all have twenty-four hours in a day, and the only difference lies in what we do with those hours. Baloney. It is a pithy maxim combining language from the past three centuries—the language of Benjamin Franklin’s time is money, the Victorian language of self-mastery, the big, bold fonts of self-help manuals and slick Instagram reels advertising productivity hacks. But the meaning of twenty-four hours differs greatly from one person to another. My twenty-four hours look different than a garment factory worker’s in Dhaka, or a soldier’s in Ukraine, or a ward member’s with a chronic illness. Even my own twenty-four hours look different today than they did when I was fifteen or twenty-two. My responsibilities, leisure, attitudes, and relationships with myself and others have changed. I am sure time will take on different valences ten years from today, as my children grow, as friends and family move, or as loved ones pass away.

How do I reorient my perception of time to view time as a gift rather than as a burden or as a possession? Perhaps I start with remembering that God has a different conception of past, present, and future than I do. God’s “thoughts are not [our] thoughts, neither are [our] ways [his] ways” (Isaiah 55:8). Time is less about optimization than about acknowledging limitations. Recognizing our dependence on God can allow eternity to pierce the fabric of our current mortal understandings of time, beginnings, and endings.

In the Doctrine & Covenants, the Lord pontificates about the nature of time, saying that he has given “a law unto all things, by which they move in their times and their seasons; . . . and they give light to each other in their times and in their seasons, in their minutes, in their hours, in their days, in their weeks, in their months, in their years” (D&C 88:42, 44). And in the Pearl of Great Price, God shows Abraham that the “reckoning” of these times, hours, weeks, and months depends on the proximity of stars and planets to “the throne of God” (Abraham 3:4–9), suggesting that earthly and eternal rotations are influenced not by size, grandeur, or popularity, but by one’s proximity to God.

All of us have times and seasons in our lives, and we vary in our proximity to God at different times throughout our lives. We were never meant to “have it all” or “do it all” at all moments. We do not all have the same twenty-four hours in a day because of our limitations. Those limitations are meant to help us give “light to each other” and shine in “whatever orbits” we find ourselves. As we turn, the gravity of God’s love pulls us away from self-centeredness and allows us to align our thoughts and ways to God’s, thus seeing our lives, relationships, opportunities, and limitations through the prism of his light.

“Prepar[ing] to meet God” in the “day of this life” requires readjusting my personal axis (Alma 34:32). Instead of relying on my inherited, post-industrial perceptions of time, I can work to increase my proximity to God—especially through devotional practices and holy days, which invite me into spaces without the demands of modern time. Holidays and Sabbath, devotional prayer and temple worship, were “made for” us to change our perceptions of ourselves and of time—to remind us that time is not a consumer product, and neither are we (Mark 2:27–28). Instead of interpreting Amulek’s call in Alma 34:33 to “not procrastinate the day of your repentance” and to “improve our time” as a series of checklists and schedules, I might shift my focus: Where is God right now, in front of me?

That answer will depend, again, on relationships.

I cannot always step away from post-industrial time. I live in this world, and I have responsibilities to people, institutions, and schedules that require respecting the time we have socially agreed to follow. Earth has a gravitational pull on me, too. But my most intimate relationships—with close friends, my family, my spouse, and my children—provide daily ways to see the face of God right here, right now, and improve the quality of my (and hopefully their) time on earth.

I think about my children, who have little conception of modern time. In many ways, I am their time. When I breastfed them, I was both flow and metronome. Even now, when I call out “five more minutes,” this measurement means nothing to them—merely Mom interrupting their play. Even though they are being socialized into our systems of time, seasons, and years, they do not understand structured time. In this respect, they live in a premodern world. They live in the now. They live according to their relationships—with those they love and those who love them.

My children invite me—sometimes force me—into this primordial time. In their presence, I live in both pre-industrial and modern time, and it is hard moving back and forth between the two. I feel the pull of the clock, of a writing deadline, or the upcoming appointment. But my children do not live in my time. Instead, they measure time based on the number of sticks picked up during a walk or how many songs they can cajole me to sing during bedtime.

My relationship with my children—the birth of myself as a mother—has changed my conception of time more than most relationships in my life. If I were to chart my own years and seasons by the birth of relationships—those moments I became daughter, friend, sister, missionary companion, wife–what would that look like? How would my orbits shift? What would be my axis?

With this mindset, my beginnings and endings do not start with birthdays or New Year’s resolutions. Instead, my times and seasons shift based on proximity to people and places that have reoriented my life. There are spots I return to, both mentally and—when possible—physically, to ground myself as time changes me and loved ones. Places where I grew, places where time seemed to open up to eternity—a mountain path in Provo Canyon; a park bench outside a church building in Chevy Chase, Maryland; a kitchen in Donetsk, Ukraine; a doorway threshold in Bangkok, Thailand.

I will never completely understand time. But when I can reject the idea of time as a series of gains or losses and instead look at the now, past, and future as sites of healing and redemption, it is easier for me to feel the beauty of non-modern time, to put aside the clock, to put away the notion of “options” or “maximizing time,” to release the annoyance I feel when my to-do list is disturbed by a child who should long ago have been asleep. Instead, I can see the face of God right now in that child, take her in my arms, and allow myself to feel eternity’s weight and wonder as an almost-sleeping child rests in my arms.

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Megan Armknecht is an associate editor for Wayfare. She is a writer and historian and lives with her husband and two children.

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This is the first essay in our new column, Light Notes, written and curated by Megan Armknecht. The essays in this column are an invitation to slow down and explore the many ways we receive light in our lives, to allow our minds and hearts be illuminated together. To receive each new Light Notes essay in your inbox, click on the “manage subscription” link and turn on notifications for Light Notes.

When I was in the third grade, I started off the year with no school friends. I was used to it; it seemed a continuation of my second-grade year, after my family had moved from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City. I had struggled to find good friends in second grade, and I consigned myself to aimless recess wanderings in third grade, too.

A four-square invitation on a late August day changed my fate.

As I started out an afternoon recess, “wander[ing] lonely as a cloud,” someone called my name. I snapped out of my reverie and saw a classmate—a new one, someone who had only just moved to Salt Lake—wave me over. “Do you want to play four-square?” she asked. She was already playing with a group of kids from our class. All I would have to do was stand in line and wait to join once someone got “out.”

I agreed.

Four-square is one of those games you can play for ten minutes or the entire recess, depending on stamina and interest. The other kids we played with got bored after a few rounds, but this newfound friend and I stayed, played, and talked until the end of recess. And then we played and talked the next day, and the next, until we found best friends in each other.

I knew I had hungered for a friend, but I didn’t realize how much I needed her—and how, I think, she needed me—until we found each other.

Perhaps we feel the urgency of friendship most keenly in childhood. Certainly the childhood need for friends (and the various betrayals, triumphs, and tokens of friendship associated with childhood) reverberates throughout our lives. The contemporary cri de coeur “How do I make friends as an adult?” suggests a longing for erstwhile days when it was “easier” to make friends—whether in childhood or five years ago. We cannot go back to before, whether to the shared spaces of childhood, the intensity of summer camps, or early college days. The emotional, societal, and spiritual necessity of cultivating friendships is a challenge for the muddled, uncertain present.

I find it striking that Jesus referred to himself as our friend. It signifies friendship as a holy, divine love. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” he said toward the end of his earthly ministry. “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you” (John 15:13–14, KJV). Christ’s invitation to friendship is an invitation to see ourselves as he sees us—as worthy of love. It is also, I think, an invitation for us to see Christ as he wants to be seen—as approachable and open.

Friendship binds our selves to others through attention, care, fun, and joy. This binding is not limited to linking ourselves and others; friendship connects us to places, communities, to our pasts, and to our futures.

Joseph Smith recognized the eternal significance of friendship. In July 1843, along the muggy banks of the Mississippi River, he declared that “friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism.”^[1]

I love the audacity of this statement. It feels right in my bones and on my tongue. I want to believe it, but living it is a challenge in our contemporary world. Friendship is trivialized and commercialized in the twenty-first century. Friends are “added” by the click of the button, human relationships are reduced to algorithms, hypermobility disrupts emotional and physical intimacy, and individuality is prioritized over symbiotic social bonds.

Emotionally, I resist the desaturation of friendship. Friendship provides marrow to human flourishing, and cultivating the intimacy of friendship empowers us to look beyond our own needs and give the blessings of friendship to others. I want that “grand fundamental principle” to reorient me towards the deep soul work of forming friendships, despite the difficulties. Making, keeping, and sometimes, letting go of friends asks me to find beauty where I might not expect to find it, calls me to faithfulness, and, ultimately, invites me to see and love others as they are.^[2]

Friendship delights in making the ordinary extraordinary. It asks us to expect the miraculous in unexpected places and people. I have frequently thought that one of the beauties of the restored gospel is the way the holy and the mundane are not mutually exclusive to each other. A farm boy sees God the Father and Jesus Christ. The voice of the Lord is heard in the seemingly unremarkable town of Fayette, Seneca County, New York (D&C 128:20). In a forsaken field in Missouri, a distressed mother can receive divine instructions on how to heal her injured son.^[3] Even Joseph Smith’s description of friendship as “grand” and “fundamental” seems to pair these two adjectives—which can mean opposite things—as friends.

When I think about some of the most important friendships at various times in my life, the seemingly mundane beginnings of those friendships now gleam with significance. For example, that invitation to play four-square changed the trajectory of my elementary school years. I can still remember the heat of the blacktop of that late August day when my new friend invited me to play. In many ways, we were opposites: she the extrovert, I the introvert; she the adventurous, I the cautious; she the athlete, I the homebody. But there were miracles waiting to happen on that elementary school blacktop; our eager faith in the ordinariness of each other created a friendship that still blesses my life.

Friendship calls me to faithfulness. The word “faithfulness” can hold different meanings. While friendship can be viewed in terms of fidelity and loyalty, it can also mean being “filled with faith”—not knowing exactly if a friendship will last, or what directions friendship will take, and choosing to try anyway.

My husband’s job currently takes our family around the world. This comes with opportunities. This also comes with challenges. It’s hard being away from family and friends, especially when I want their support in the challenges and joys of my daily life. It’s not as though I can keep the friends I’ve made throughout the years in my pocket; I go in and out of their lives, they come in and out of mine, and we are grateful when chance and time bring us together again.

It takes faith to try making new friends, just as it takes faith and loyalty to keep up rituals of friendship with those far away from me. Friendship, like faith, cannot be forced. This means there will be unpredictability and risk. The riskiness of friendship means that there have been (and will be) periods of loneliness. It means that I have (and will) hurt others, and they will (and have) hurt me, whether through miscommunication, unmet expectations, or thoughtlessness. Faithfulness does not shield us from hurt. But it does give us courage to try again, or, perhaps, to let go—believing that men and women are “that they might have joy” throughout our various seasons of life (2 Nephi 2:25).

Even though friendships ebb and flow over the course of mortality, friendship is a surprisingly resilient bond of love. Binding human relationships through love is a central project of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the driving impulse behind sealing ordinances and in our ideas of heaven. We often talk about this in terms of familial love. But friendship’s love is sacred, too, and can bind us to each other in ways that span our lifetimes (and, I believe, our eternities). In Doctrine and Covenants 128, Joseph Smith wrote of the need for a “welding link of some kind or other between the fathers and the children” (D&C 128:18). He also used the image of welding to describe the bonds of friendship. Friendship, he said, was like links welded together in a blacksmith shop: “Iron to iron; [friendship] unites the human family with its happy influence.”^[4] As friends, we come together as equals, as iron and iron, made of the same elements of divinity, mud, salt, and hope, as we strengthen each other and whatever communities we find ourselves within.

My life is richer because of good friends. Friendship is a relationship that asks for renewal, but which also renews. And even if time, distance, and circumstances weaken bonds, I still believe there is something that lasts, something that leaves its residue on my soul, something pulling at a subatomic level to remind me of the times I have purely given and received love from members of God’s family whom I have, at various times of my life, called the blessed name of friend. And not only to remind me, but to find ways to bring heaven now, wanting all of us linked together.

I want them all with me, in front of me. I want us in the verdant green days of Cambridge, bathed in fairy lights; in confidences shared under the soaring maple tree of the elementary school play yard; in intense conversations about God while crammed five-people deep in a Honda Civic; in laughter echoing in the pockmarked kitchen of a five-story Ukrainian krushchyovka; in late-night walks under the Narnia-like street lamps of a medieval university town; in hurried realizations on the paved sidewalks of Provo, Utah. I want them all in front of me, with those thrills of recognizing, Yes. Eureka. I have found joy. I have found camaraderie. We have found each other. I see you, love you, even if that love changes over time, even if you one day do not love me anymore. Iron welded to iron, our past has linked us, and our present and future will never look the same.

^[1] History of the Church, 5:517; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith on July 23, 1843, in Nauvoo, Illinois; reported by Willard Richards.

^[2] See Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2009), 66.

^[3] See Alexander L. Baugh, “‘I’ll Never Forsake’: Amanda Barnes Smith (1809–1886),” in Women of Faith in the Latter Days: Volume One, 1775–1820, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Brittany A. Chapman, eds., (Deseret Book, 2011), 327–42.

^[4] History of the Church, 5:517; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith on July 23, 1843, in Nauvoo, Illinois; reported by Willard Richards.

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Megan Armknecht is an associate editor for Wayfare. She is a writer and historian currently based out of Bangkok, where she lives with her husband and two children.

Art by Ferdinand Hodler.

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