But
when you look around at the rest of the biological world, it makes you wonder
how mixed up time makes everything. A dog has no watch, a deer does not
fret over passing burfdays and cats could give a shit about time, they sleep
most it away anyway. Man alone measures time, man alone chimes the hours
as they pass. It is the single most feared thing in our lives, time. We
have and always will have a fear of time running out!
Time
is the most familiar thing in the world, and yet philosophically one of the
most puzzling. Is the present what's
left when you subtract what has already happened, and what is yet to
happen? Then it seems to vanish into a
mere instant. Are future events
completely unreal? Or are they just the
things we can't know yet? Is time
unreal, as many of us simpletons have speculated? I have never been able
to get the math to work.
I
have often used the comparison of life to a train ride, starting on day one,
ending at that hopefully distant station. Folks get on, folks get off and
sometimes she just goes off the rails. I have never understood those who
fear time, it is not the ceaseless reaper, stalking us on our ride. I may
not know or understand time fully but I tend to look for the positive in
everything. I refuse to believe in anything that would conclude
with the end overcoming the means to get to that end! We need to enjoy
the ride because the end is unknown.
I
hope I never get to hung up on the end, of whatever it may be. If our
lives run down the river of time, I want an inner tube and I am going to enjoy
the ride. I watch a lot of people rushing around, for God only knows
what. Got get to work, gotta get home, gotta get to the store. We focus
on the end, almost always - think about it! There is a philosophy called
presentism, which is compatible with Galilean relativity, in which time is
independent of space. But when you start thinking about my favorite
Brother from a different mother Albert, it is incompatible with Einsteinian
relativity.
I
find it funny that presentism can also be used more loosely to refer to a
narrow focus on the conditions of the moment - HELLO! The 28th Buddha,
Siddhārtha Gautamano, was preaching that 2500 years ago! We have to live
in the moment. But damn it, there we are again back to time. Why is
it that nothing else cares about time like we do, why have we figured out all
these elaborate methods of keeping track of it. Almost all ancient
cultures were tracking it, with stars and celestial body's roaming around the
heavens.
Time,
it is a hard thing to understand! Time, I hate to admit,is the MOST
IMPORTANT thing for our hearts. It is so important to tell those that you
love, that you love them. It is so important to not to put things off
till tomorrow, tomorrow may never come. It is so important that we are
present in our lives, smelling roses, enjoying a sunrise, staring at the clouds
while floating in a pool.
Don't
let it get away, if you want to do something or see someone - do those things.
We always have choices, don't let the fact you may find yourself in a
place you don't want to be! Change it!
We may not see the change happening quickly, but with time and a series
of different choices a better ride will come, a bigger inner tube and a cold
beer. Be part of your own solution, do it now!
Time,
it just hurts my head! Maybe it is simple, maybe we created it to remind
us how important the journey is and to remind us to cherish every moment we are
given. Maybe time is the coal that is powering my train of life, driving
us into some distant destination that is just unknowable. Oh well, I am
glad each of you has joined me on my ride through life, just reading this means
you are on my train - thank you for joining me.
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