2012 MY DIARY - JAN 5 - time

Thursday January 5th 2012

Time is a tricky thing. Paradoxically, it lasts forever, but somehow always runs out. My challenge for this piece of writing is to do it in limited time. Since I never seem to have enough time on my hands, and it’s always “too late” (it is 1am as I type this), I am giving myself 15 minutes at most to complete today’s writing. Time is of the essence.
There are so many famous quotes and phrases about time, I could spend my “15 minutes of fame” listing them, but you would have probably heard them before and that wouldn’t be interesting, now would it? So instead I have decided to make up my own sayings: “time is all we have left, when we strip away all else”. Or, how about: “time makes no excuses, gives no reasons or explanations - it just is…” Another one: “without time we would not exist; because we exist in time, it is part of our existence”. A rhyme anyone? “Tick, tock, tick tock, Time is racing round the clock”. What about a riddle? “What keeps moving forward, but never gets anywhere? Time!” One last one: “we are enslaved by that which we created: time”.
Whether those phrases reach out to you or not, you cannot deny that time is a huge factor in each and every one of your lives. It has affected you from the moment you were born, up to this day – in fact, nothing else has ever had a bigger impact on your life than this radical element. Because of it we age. Because of it we are born. We only have a limited amount of it in our life -“time” on this earth. Such a little word that stands for such a huge magic of science, a monumental part of the history of our universe.
Whether you personally are stuck in the past, longing and dreaming of the future, or actually aware and enjoying every minute of the present, chances are - like the minute hand on your watch - your life is revolving around a ticking clock. It would be a miracle if we could ever discover what exactly happened before that clock began ticking, and what would happen if it ever stopped. What came before the time bomb which we call the Big Bang exploded? What comes after? Is time really that fragile… or will it “stand the test of time?” It may be constant, yet time always appears to move at a different pace – it speeds up, rushes by, slows down. Who has not experienced a boring or scary minute that seemed to last a lifetime, or an hour of fun or hard work which passed by in no time at all? The biggest puzzle - and perhaps miracle - of all is how this organized thing we call time allows the world to function harmoniously. Without it we could not control travel or conduct successful experiments, we would not be able to count down the days of the year or monitor space travel. We could not even cook the perfect boiled egg! We would be lost - our world as we know it would end up in utter chaos.
Sometimes when my life feels like it is in chaos, I wish that I had more time to sort it out. I try to fill up my hours with productive actions rather than procrastinate, but even I admit that sometimes I just enjoy “wasting time”. This guilty pleasure is an act of rebellion; it shouts out to time “no, I won’t let you govern me, I will spend you as I wish and waste you if I want!” Doing nothing is the ultimate time waster, and arguably the best way to enjoy time itself. Didn’t the wisest of men say that simply allowing ourselves to be, and not do anything, is the most powerful state of existence anyone can achieve? When the mind and body are still, time ceases to exist… Is that not ultimate bliss, true freedom? And if time stops existing in the mind, does that mean that it stops existing altogether? If for a moment we can entertain the thought that we are the ones who created this incredible phenomenon, then do we have the power to make it disappear as well?
There are many questions about time, and few answers. The truth is that time is a mystery, but one dominant enough to captivate all of humanity. Time is timeless. Timespace, as quantum physicists call it, is what our universe is made of. How can it not affects us all? But how will it change your life? Only time will tell.
5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 – Time out. My fifteen minutes are up.