“Why do we set our watches to the sun and the moon?”
Swallowed Up – Rhythm in the Word, Volume III
So I’ve talked about time – from time to time – about how I’ve never understood the concept or dimension of it. We speak of it as though it were an entity, such as light, or wind, or hot and cold. But is it really anything tangible? We count up the seconds and hours, the days and the years but isn’t that just us, piecing out our existence into manageable chunks? Yes this world turns around and we watch the sun and the moon disappear and reappear. And yes, we grow and mature. And then age and deteriorate. Time passes, as they say. But where does it go? And where does it come from?
We measure life in a linear fashion so that we can handle it a little better. That’s understandable – we need a point of reference to have some control over that which has no real explanation. As soon as you realize that you are in a particular moment, it’s gone. Then another one takes its place… and so on. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think, from the beginning (was there one?) to the end (will there be one?) is One Eternal Moment. Only one. It’s always the same time, always has been, always will be… Now.
Rather than be spooked by this perspective, I think we can enjoy the freedom. Unbound by the artificial chains of the clock and the calendar, we might better be able to appreciate this miracle we take for granted and be more at peace with our fate, our mortality. Sure, we still have to be ‘on time’ for our affairs. The movie starts at eight. Thanksgiving is day after tomorrow. But we don’t have to worry about how far it is to the end of the road or regret opportunities not taken because we’re still in the same moment we’ve always been in. We should take comfort in that.