Time

Time has no need to be merciful, and at any rate, all it can do is pass.

Its passing is felt in pauses: when I realize I have been on 9gag for the better parts of three days, when I could - and should have been - doing anything else.  While wasting it, it remains wasted to us, and to those priorities that remain unchecked in our tick boxes; and having wasted it we pause to reflect on its having passed.  Its passing is felt in pauses, pauses that do not pause the passing of time, but pauses us in the wasting of it.  In our pausing we become more aware of how time passes: time can do nothing but pass, no matter how we pause.

Its passing is felt in losses: I remember a friend whose mother died a few years ago.  In the death of anyone we know, time looms large; it is a reminder that does not need a reminder - which does not need any toll - for it is that which makes presence, and therefore, absence.  Death does not stop time for those still in it; death only stops time for those with no time any longer, no presence, no pausing, no living, not in time, any longer.  In death we become more aware of how time passes: time can do nothing but pass, no matter who dies.  It is especially cruel when it is a mother that dies.

Its passing is felt in feeling:  when we hurt, or when we rejoice, we feel time inevitably pass.  Feelings take time, they happen in time, and end in time.  It is perhaps in the realm of feeling that the greatest of pulls - that of eternity - is most felt: we want this happiness to last; we dread not being able to move on away from time that hurts.  Its passing is felt in feeling; and its passing is unmercifully one way - we can neither anticipate the past nor regret the future, but there will be feelings, and there will be time enough for feelings.

Its passing, after all, is felt in its very passing - passings which stretch, freeze, stop, regain momentum, carry inertia, but does not end - it cannot.  It is the most perfect promise, and the most perfect despair.

We are all creatures of time, we are masters of it in one sense and slaves of it in another sense, until we, too, are no longer.

But time has no need to be merciful, and at any rate, all it can do is pass.

Comments

  1. Anonymous21 June 2015 at 18:35

    Hello. I'm a passerby who stumbled upon this entry of yours. I want to thank you for this nice and insightful read that has pretty much turned my ...passing... Sunday into a period of much need reflection.

    ReplyDelete

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