“The day is short, and the work is great, and the laborers are idle, and the wage is abundant, and the master of the house urges”—Pirkei Avot 2:15
Rabbi Steinsaltz writes:
“That ‘the day is short’ is a discovery which I make daily.
I wake up in the morning, and within a very short time I discover that it is midnight or 2:00 A.M.
And I wonder: What has happened to this day?
Where did it evaporate to?
Every Rosh Hashanah I regret that there is no double leap year, with a second month of Elul.
Had there been a second Elul, I might have been able to finish something before Rosh Hashanah.
But there is no second Elul, and again I feel that I am short of so much time.
The day is short, amazingly short, and it ends in tremendous speed; and thus go by weeks and months and years.”
From “The Time Is Short and the Work Is Great” p.5, in On Being Free by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz