Time

There are good times and there are bad times. At least the way we humans like to perceive it. But when you think about it a little deeper, time is just time, there is nothing good or bad about it. Time is like a flowing river and it keeps flowing, ticking by irrespective of what happens in those passing moments. Maybe time itself does not know the value of all those incidents, historic and mundane, that keep happening on the shores of this ever flowing river that it brushes along and indifferently keeps flowing.

How does it matter to time itself what has happened in its past and what will happen in its future? Words, just words are of no significance to time as much as it is important to us, mere mortals. Time refuses to have a memory of its own, but still we the mere mortals force, compel, dispel this idea, this burden of history, words, memories, thrusting it upon something as fragile, invisible, and unimportant as this invented fantasy, the inhuman concept of time. Does it really work, or change or affect time itself? I presume not. Time has been flowing, as it flows now, as it will keep flowing in time to come, without accepting any kind of burden on its head. In time it forgets everything, and forgives everyone – I presume, does it not?

Yes, time is unimportant, probably the most unimportant dimensions of them all. Time for itself is not so important as much as it has become for us. It is like the song of a nightingale which is so mellifluous to our ears, but perhaps the nightingale itself does not know about the sweetness of its own voice. Time has become the means to shackle our minds. Time has become those chains, those boxes and trunks, and dungeons in which our thoughts are supposed to be stored, processed, analysed and eventually used to kill our own existence, finish off life itself, as clearly as we have been seeing it for age old centuries.

Thoughts are more to be felt than to be processed. Time has taught us. As I feel so too. While in a sleeping state, it does not matter what dream we see, and what does it mean, and how close we can get to it when we are awake. But it does matter how we felt during that dream, what was the emotion flowing through our mind, how did my heart beat at that time, and my soul flew when those fleeting moments of the dream passed by?

Humans have invented this inhuman fantasy of time. Yes, it may have made life easier for some, but has brought death closer to each one of us. Now we keep waiting for the end looking at our watch, rather than looking up at the sky feeling the breeze on our face completely oblivious of the end – of any kind. Now the tick of a second on the watch sounds louder than the sigh of my all natural breath. Now the electronic sound of the alarm has become more natural than the rooster’s call at dawn. It was not necessary but it has been done – this inhuman invention of time. If it had not been done, we as a race would perhaps have a longer span to live, to love this life, and to enjoy this gift that we have received from this universe. But alas, it is too late now, and maybe we have to wait for the next cycle to come, which again time itself has no clue about. It will just naturally keep flowing, as it is flowing now, as it has always flown.

Time itself does not know that it exists, does it? I think trees also don’t know. Rocks, stones, hills and meadows – they also don’t. The bird kingdom – does it matter to them? The animal kingdom – maybe they are aware of it, but never bothered by it. Only we humans have sculpted time in a way that it is able to put us into cages – small cages, big cages, physical cages and mind cages, all kinds of cages. And then we try to beautify these cages, by buying things and objects, trying to adorn its walls with expensive clocks and antique hour glasses, just to make ourselves believe that it’s all well. Although that vintage cuckoo clock on our wall that cuckoos every passing hour should remind us of our disgusting slavery to it, we remain ever uncertain about its utter insignificance.

This moment, is all we have. And this moment is not a part of time as we know it. This moment is beyond the understanding of our past and our future. This moment lies at the very intersection of what’s real and what’s not. That’s why we skip it, overlook it, and some of us even ignore it. A hundred debates, and a thousand words, and a million sighs can never prove anything beyond what’s more important to us than life itself. Life is the only reality which we have, and this life exists only in this very moment, does it not? The moment this moment disappears, the next moment comes and the past moment suddenly becomes meaningless, unimportant, and irrelevant, does it not? What has happened before, and what is about to happen next, is but a figment of our imagination, a fantasy, unreal and intangible. What is real is here and now at this very moment, as it has always been, and thus will always be.