Low diatribe

Growing up, I heard it every weekday: "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives."

The opening line of my mother's soap opera, a daily ritual that marked the rhythm of afternoons and the beginning of nap time. I must have heard it thousands of times. And for years, I accepted the metaphor without question: time as sand, finite and falling, each grain a day slipping away into the past.

But I've been thinking about that hourglass lately — really thinking about it — and I've realized that we are only ever conscious of the bottom half.

We live in the accumulation. The sand that has already fallen. The experiences that have settled into us, grain by grain, forming the foundation of who we are. Each one a story, a scar, a spark. Each shaped by friction and gravity, by the choices that pulled us forward and the moments that slowed us down. We are the sediment of our own becoming.

The top half? We can't see it. We can't know what's there or how much remains. We imagine it as a fixed chamber, slowly emptying — time running out, possibility diminishing. But that's just our assumption. The truth is, we have no idea what the top of the glass actually is.

So lately I've been wondering: what if it isn't fixed at all?

What if the top of the hourglass is a scoop — wide open to the cosmos, funneling through what's still possible? What if what's flowing through us isn't time running out, but the raw material of experience pouring in? What if the top half isn't limited by what it holds, but defined by how much it can receive?

From that perspective, the hourglass isn't measuring loss. It's a system for transformation. Each grain that falls doesn't disappear — it joins the growing foundation of who we are. The past isn't gone; it's sediment. Compressed, refined, made dense with meaning.

The sand at the bottom doesn't resist gravity; it accepts it. It understands that falling is part of formation. That to accumulate depth, something must first let go of height.

So much of leadership — and life — is spent trying to live in the top half, grasping at what's still above. We chase the grains midair, trying to hold possibility before it becomes experience. But everything we are comes from what has already landed. That's where weight lives. That's where resonance forms.

I've started to notice how leadership works in this system. It's not about holding the sand in suspension — it's about guiding the flow. Noticing how the system funnels experience: what gets through, what gets stuck, what never even makes it to the glass. And learning to widen the scoop — to open the funnel so more people, more perspectives, more possibilities can flow through. To expand capacity without losing integrity.

When the funnel narrows, only the familiar passes through. The same stories, the same voices, the same kinds of progress. But when it widens — through trust, through curiosity, through vulnerability — the flow changes. Less filtering for comfort, more channeling for potential. More voices, more perspectives, more of what we didn't know we needed gets through.

Resonance, I think, is the continuity between what flows in and what settles, between what's shared and what stays. It happens when we become attuned to that transfer — when we create a rhythm of experience that doesn't just pass through, but compounds. When learning becomes sediment that strengthens the structure rather than clogging it. When time, energy, and care move cleanly through the people and systems we shape.

The leaders I aspire to be like didn't manage the sand. They tended the hourglass itself. They tuned its shape so the flow stayed steady, so the exchange stayed alive. They didn't demand control of the grains — they shaped the vessel so gravity could do its quiet work.

I strive to practice that kind of leadership. Not grasping for what's falling, not hoarding what's settled, but tending the shape that allows meaning to move. Widening the scoop so more of the cosmos can pass through. So that what accumulates below carries more voices, more color, more truth.

It still echoes through my mind sometimes: "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." But now I hear it differently. Not as a countdown, but as an invitation. The sand keeps falling. The scoop stays open. And we are the accumulation — growing deeper, grain by grain, with everything that flows through.