Monday 29 September 2014

Tempus fugit


I used to hate Time. As a child, I dreaded the ticking of the clock so much I would make pacts with myself to find ways to cheat the passing of time as if there lay, somewhere, a solution to stop it and if not stop it at least slow its passing down. Time frightened me in the same way one may be terrified of burglars breaking into their home at night. In many ways, Time was a thief to me: it lurked, ever present in the dull ticking of a watch or a clock in the background, to steal my youth, my dreams and my hopes right from under my feet and I could do nothing to stop it. No one in this world could do anything to stop it. Time was the greatest Houdini of the universe, you see.

After a while I suppose I started to get used to the constant robbery - days, months, years ticking by in a never ending advance of Time on my life, stolen, never to be retrieved, swallowed away like a child of Chronos. I cursed, I cried, I shook my fists to the distant skies but no one heard, and no one was there to listen. After more of my life was engulfed in the black pool of Time I began to recognise values in the way it forever rushed me forward. Life, I experienced here and there, was rather brutal and intransigent and we, humans, spend our lives trying to keep the upper hand in some way, forcing a human mask onto nature's heartless mechanical processes, fumbling with clocks and reaching for the stars if not in the hope of finding God sitting on a cloud, to prove to ourselves that we are in control.

But I know now I'll never control time. It is a pointless quest that overlooks the real value Time brings to the table, and to me that value lies in the power it has to erase even the worst... given enough time.

If you allow enough time to slip by all things eventually fade away into the deep well of memories and forgetfulness. That’s the only thing I like about time, or change. This power we’re able to harness from it to let go of all the things that harmed us.