For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Idling away on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I began thinking of how times change or rather how it changes us. The past few weeks have been the most tiring, tumultous and exhausting times I ever had, both mentally and physically. We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams. Some are with us, that's why we call them present. Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.
We talk about those golden times that went past us and we did not even realise. You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by. The clock on the wall, the watch you're wearing on your wrist, every single beat of your heart, is a reminder of the time gone by. Watches are so named as a reminder - if you don't watch carefully what you do with your time, it will slip away from you. Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.
They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. With so much happening around you at any moment... we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. Then there are people...hordes of them surrounding you ( or you surrounding them ) all the time, never a moment alone.. Time goes by so fast, people go in and out of your life. You must never miss the opportunity to tell these people how much they mean to you but then how many of us do it...A handful of us maybe.
Every relationship starts as a fresh new season under the sun. It goes through all the seasonal changes and then it is bound to end. The bright spring, the burning summers, the replenishing rains, the rusty autumn and then the dry dead winters. At times we start taking people for granted..That marks the end of of what could have been a life long acquaintance or even more. The phone calls we are waiting for never come, the mails become a thing of the past and what is left in our memories is a faint old remembrance of how things were and then comes the realisation of why we let them be like what they are.
It is then that we realise or tend to, search for reasons or actions or deeds which could have have made a difference. We start repenting about the one phone call, the one "Hi " note, that could have kept everything going. Remorse fills up wwith agony and then it digs deep into us. Out of sheer desperation, we think of how we can turn back time, but then can we turn back anything that's unstoppable. Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. But does that mean, that we can sacrifice the present that is today for a better tomorrow or what could have been a different ending to the past stories. No we can't.
The human race has mastered everything, from wild beasts to the un-imaginable streches of science that has led us to new horizons everyday. We have come closer to being our own gods with the sciene of cloning and medicinal healing. but still time remains un-conquered. Rich people can't buy more hours. Neither can the poor people sell it to them for a living. Scientists can't invent new minutes. the clock can still have only twenty fours. We can't stop the sun from rising and sinking. But we can still do is plan for a better tomorrow. But planning alone is not enough. We need to put those plans into action. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
A wise man once said and I quote:
Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes
Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats;
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years.
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