As I sit at my laptop, I have to think about how I am just now starting my time here at the Odyssey. It's exciting, getting back into writing again. But as I set up my accounts and brew myself a cup of coffee, I found myself wondering about time itself. I believe Mitch Albom describes time in the best sense:
"Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. an alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”
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Man, read that quote and try not to get shivers. Go ahead, try it. I'll wait. Now are you ready?
I don't necessarily see time in the exact same way.
Time isn't just a way for humanity to find some kind of control over the inevitability of death. That is far too depressing for this writer. No, to me, time is a way to measure memories, good and bad. Time is knowing how long you grieved for a lost one, and it is the marker for when you could be happy again. Time is when you get your first kiss as a nervous teen, and it is the last fight ending a long relationship.
Time isn't real. It cannot be real. The moment something becomes real, it loses it's meaning. To many, death isn't real, and that is what causes us fear and sadness. When we die, it means nothing. We know it is our time. Death itself is meaningless once we experience it.
In this sense, time is like love. Both are intangible. Both are not truly real. But both mean a great deal to virtually everyone. A friend of mine said that their love was the most important thing in their life. At the time, we were eight-years-old, so there was no way she knew anything about what love is, but that point is moot. Love meant a lot to her at the age of eight, an age where love was just a word that she knew was important. Time is the same way.
By now, my coffee is finished, as are the second and third cups along with it. I find myself counting down the minutes till my next class, those precious minutes of freedom from the classroom and lecture halls.
I remember hearing that every second a person dies, and that every second a baby is born. Whether those statistics are true, I am not sure, and to be perfectly honest, I don't want to be sure. That concept of Yin and Yang, life and death, time starting and stopping, it holds meaning that would be lost if it was to become true. To become real.
