Time is a magical and the strangest thing. It is very predictable. There are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour and there are twenty four hours. Days turn to weeks, weeks, turn to months, and months turn to years. Yet time is most unpredictable especially when you’re up to something.
Time slows down when there is nothing going on. It is sometimes so slow that when you’re down, it feels like you’ll have to observe entire epochs pass you by. One painful millennium after another painful millennium. But time also speeds up. It can become lightnight fast and things we want to last for very long, come and go so quickly that we wonder if they even happened at all, but they did, no matter if we noticed, or how we felt the movement of time.
What shall we make of all this? How do we spend less time in epochs of malaise and more time travelling at the speed of light to new unexplored galaxies?
By making a choice.
Time responds to our lives based on what we choose to do and who we are. It doesn’t have favourites. It doesn’t manipulate or influence anything. It simply waits for us to act and when we don’t it waits as long as it’s needed, and when we do it responds as fast as it needs to.
We are the magical and stramgest thing about time. Time stands still. Moves at a steady predictable pace. It is us that choose to dance with time in most unusual and unpredictable ways.
But we don’t get to do it forever. We don’t, but yes, I do believe and hope that there is an after life. A better one that I can imagine or understand. Something, somewhere that gives me a chance to keep going and to reconnect with everyone I love.
We don’t get to do anything forever. We get to do it now and the pace at which we want to get at it is up to us. The pace at which we take on life, and the intensity with which we live is important. Too many of us don’t even know they are alive. They are living, but like the walking dead, they are simply looking for their next meal, their next thrill, next task, and next all inclusive vacation.
Don’t take time for granted or abuse it. Don’t stand still nor run so fast that you miss the art of being human. Learn to live in the in between. Learn to be instead of trying to do. Treat time with the respect and love it deserves and you can have all your dreams come true, and help other people reach for theirs.
Because that’s what it is all about. It’s not just about us. The more we get our lives together. The more we become happy, successful and content. The more people discover the joy and beauty of living each and every day, and not just once in a while, the more this will become a norm. The more we will share everything with each other, and time in a sense will no longer matter. Other than its there, to keep time, like a drummer, at a performance we never want to end.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Ben Neale.
https://unsplash.com/@ben_neale