MY EXPERIENCES WITH A MONSTER CALLED TIME

"Time, you old gypsy man;
 Will you not stay?
 And put up your caravan just for a day?  "

Time has fascinated all contemplative minds. It is a creepy monster which has failed to surprise none. Its pace is matchless and astonishing. It is August; close your eyes and a year has passed! Whoa! Time has to be taken care of or else we are doomed. Time once lost, never comes back. Time slips. Days pass. Years fade. Life ends. And what we came to do on earth must be done while there is time.

My experiments with this monster have been kaleidoscopic. I have had a myriad of events of joy as well as sorrow in my life and I feel thankful for having had my share. After all, life is all about learning and striving to be better with each passing day. Everything you do; consciously or sub- consciously leaves an impact on your existence. Each and every second of your life counts. Its value is unfathomable and its power is inestimable. The fact is that time is eternal. It moves. What was yesterday is not today. What is today will not be tomorrow. Yesterday is gone. Today is and tomorrow is yet to come.

The passage of the present is experienced differently within the human consciousness; the non-reversible passage of events, which is experienced as past, present, and future in the context of things coming to be and passing away. I don't know what time is, beyond a mysterious self-similar backdrop upon which we lead our lives. It is intricately woven across the scales of observation - from the quantum level to the phenomenological time of cultural revolutions. I do also know, on a deeply practical level, that each moment in time carries the potential for great integrity within our lives. If we can become aware of moments as they flow by, focusing our intention on just that awareness, we can connect to a thread beyond time: A thread of meaning that attaches moments together, moments separated in a branchlike way through fractal time. This thread may be strengthened, like a rope that holds an anchor of security within a complex world. Perhaps this is what we experience on our way to death? The weaving of our personal quilts of moments in time, big and small, all bound together. Perhaps time slows into death, approaching an asymptote, unyoking itself from our current experience of time and reaching down into the timelessness of quanta, some quantum afterlife?

The philosophical 'me' comes into existence whenever I start thinking about this stupid monster. I am amazed, bewildered, astonished ( My vocabulary fails me!) at the thought of this monster. I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time'- it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not. Our life is made up of time. Our days are measured in hours; our pay measured by those hours, our knowledge is measured by years. And yet time eventually runs out and you wonder in your heart of hearts if those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades were being spent the best way they possibly could.

Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration.

P.S:  Happy one year of this remarkable change!

© Aiman