Time might not exist outside life’s presence.
Impossible for us to know. Time has no meaning
save for that placed upon it by consciousness.
Time is a disease for the mortal, some say,
but there is not yet a cure. Perhaps there shouldn’t be.
I cannot step outside of Time in order to observe it flowing by,
like a river cannot step up on the ridge to watch itself
progress to the sea. I can look back in Time through my cerebral lens,
can imagine far into the future, but I cannot stop Time.
One day my Time here will end, but will Time continue for others?
I imagine so, but I will not know for sure.
Am I, therefore, Time itself?
Self-help gurus advise us to master our Time.
But what does that mean?
To organize ourselves in order to be more productive?
To find methods for balancing work and leisure and
community responsibilities and family roles within Time?
To devise strategies for maximizing effort spent on
truly important things (though we debate with ourselves
what those might be on any given day, month, year)
and ignore the unimportant things?
If I, myself, am Time, does that mean that I must master myself,
learn how to become a better human, perhaps focus on virtues
such as deemed important by the ancient Stoics –
wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice?
Time.
One cannot master something that one cannot escape,
that will not bend to the will of the strongest or the richest,
will not bend even to the will of the mind. I have tried.
So many times, I have tried to throw a lariat around Time,
slow its progress, pull it to a stop, even reverse it,
to undo my mistakes, to have more moments with a lover
who left this world too young to die old.
But mastering Time is like trying to swallow the moon,
or to breathe life back into death,
or to know what was there before the birth of the universe.
I think to admit defeat to Time,
but that feels unnecessary, maybe even wrong.
It’s like admitting defeat in a fight I’m having with myself.
Better to befriend Time, accept our dissimilar values,
admit that we cannot exist separately,
but only as one.
