About Time

Time is running away.
It’s like it committed a crime or something, its running so fast. Why is time in such a rush, anyway?! I think it has something to do with watches and computers.

They say what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Once upon a time, when time was young and lazy, we didn’t know all that much, so we must not have been hurting that much either.

Today, though, it’s a different story. In this age of information, we’ve got pretty much every piece of information we might ever want, literally at our fingertips. Just type your question into the computer, and BAM! There it is. The answer. Most diseases have been cured – although new ones keep cropping up. Those damned diseases. Won’t ever quit. Anyway, my point being, we’re well on our way to taming nature and conquering the universe.

But there’s one thing we’re still trying to figure out, and that is time. How the heck does it do that?! That thing. Slow and fast, slow fast, fast slow. When you want it to stand still, it becomes a sky rocket. When you want it to go ahead and hurry the bleep up, it becomes this syyyyyyyyyyrupy substance that barely moves.

Time is rushing like water.
That is, when it is in a rush. Which is most of the time. Rush, rush, rush… new directions, new challenges, new everything. You never see the same piece of time again. Never. It changes constantly, renewing itself, becoming something different. Time heals everything, they say. Well, that may be true. It’s just how the body heals itself. It just piles layers and layers of new cells on in place of the old, broken ones, and bam! You got a scab. And bam! You got a scar. And – maybe not bam, but eventually, maybe, scar’s gone, too. At least much less visible. With time.

Time is a strange creature.
A ball that bounces around with no apparent plan or direction. I pick it up in my hand to study it, to find out what it really looks like, must try and do something with it, then, all of a sudden it is gone like the spirit in Aladdin’s lamp; unnoticed it has vanished and run out between my fingers like sand in an hour glass.

Before, when time was just a round slice that trotted along, round and round in circles at a comfortable speed, there was no problem. But then the railroad was invented and the trains had to be on time. We had to start keeping track of time. Connections and communications were developed. Time was synchronized all over the world. Then we got digital watches. And that’s when time really got in a rush.

Ever watched a stopwatch count time? All those tenths and hundredths racing, galloping, flying ahead, crumbling away at time. Nothing left behind. A burning fuse being eaten away. And then came the nano-seconds. Computerized time tracking, because we had now broken time up into such small pieces that the human brain could no longer relate to it (just read Alvin Toffler’s Time Wars described in the Antioch Group - recommended.) No wonder we get stressed out!

Time to slow down.
People have never had as much spare time as in our time. And never have people complained as much about lack of time. But we need not forget that the same industry that provides us with all our “time saving” gadgets, also gives us plenty of stuff to waste our “saved” minutes and hours on. What would we do without TV or videogames, for crying out loud! Old people probably wonder why young ones always seem so stressed when they have their entire lives ahead of them to do whatever it is that they need to do. Truth of the matter is, they are the ones with a reason to stress out, with so little time left. But then, again, they were born of a different time.

Time to be. On time.
Which I rarely am, even though I always try to be. Why is it so difficult for me to be on time?! I think it has something to do with always trying to cram too much stuff into my time space. You know, that room of time we all have at our disposal. “I don’t have time,” we say. But that’s definitely a lie. If there’s one thing that is absolutely evenly divided between every human being, it is time. Rich or poor, high or low – we all have that same size room of time to furnish as we wish. Our problem is always trying to fit too much furniture in without thinking of leaving enough living space.

Enjoy the time you have. Be. Measure out some time to live.

It’s about time.