Wednesday 23 October 2013

Time

Tick tock tick tock tick tock. All I ever hear is tick tock tick tock tick tock. My clock is so loud. I love that. I love the sound of time passing. It puts things into perspective for me. I don't often hear it, because the human brain can not focus on one particular thing when met with 1000 tasks, but when I sit still, it is loud. Deafeningly loud. Every time i hear a tick, i picture a gigantic hour glass with my name written on it. My life. Every tick is another grain of sand falling. Another second of my life that I will never get back. You'd think this would motivate me to get up and do something. but no. Quite the opposite. It inspires me to be still. And in the stillness all i want to do is listen to the falling sand and not wonder too much about it. Instead just to let it fall. Let it slip away. Because it will do that, whether i wonder or not. So I revel in the stillness. There is something so majestic about stopping. People always tell us to work and never stop until we get there. But get where, exactly? Ignorance is blinding. Every time we get to where we want to be, we find another goal to reach, until we die. Every goal seemingly more urgent than it's predecessor. How is that? It is so because we are too stupid to realise this pattern, so we just keep chasing our tails. 

Getting there is not unique. It will never be unique. There will always be a 'there' to get. And we will always get there. Because we are humans and we are slaves to our egos. We let society propel us into something we do not even understand, yet we continue to linger aimlessly despite our oceans of dubiety. We do not ask questions because we know there are no answers. So we just float through time in a random sequence of: trying, hoping for an eventual: getting. we will always want more no matter how much we get. We don't even truly know what we want, but we absolutely must get it. Because we can not undo so we must compensate through gain. If time could speak and generously bestowed us the choice of moving forwards or backwards, i wonder how many of us would travel back. I'd politely ask time if I could just have a little peak, if that's okay. I'd like to see what i looked like 20 mistakes ago. If time was not so hell-bent in its rigid quest forward, I would certainly be inveigled by her plethora of cardinal points. That being said, in the absence of time, we can appreciate the majesty of stillness. Stopping is exhilarating. Silence is melodic. An ocean without waves is hauntingly beautiful. Silence has more power to destruct and redeem than do any thousands of loquaciously strung together words. Let that permeate for a moment. The world of time has never compelled you to do anything extraordinary. Our brightest moments are alight only in the lack, thereof. Not wanting for anything but what you have is nirvana. Brief as that moment may be. Let that permeate. Living in the moment does not have to be bungee jumping, cliff diving and telling people that you love them. Living in the moment is also just a heightened sense of awareness that we are, in fact, alive, in the moment. In THIS moment. The moment that is passing me by. 


And there it went. 


They say time is running out. I'd like to hear how it sounds when it's running, if that's okay. We live in a world of earnest people who live, work and die. We are pushed and pushed until we have our backs against the wall, and there, stuck in between a rock and a hard place, is the precise moment that we are judged. And then we torture ourselves with the mentality that we absolutely must press forward, in all manners of urgency. Please tell me, how urgent exactly is that? We are not in a hurry to go anywhere but Heaven. They say time is your worst enemy. They talk about the mountains of human potential, were we not handicapped by time. But i disagree. Time is the only thing that has been consistent with you, that has never lied to you or deceived you. Time has always been honest about how much of itself it lends to you. Time has never given you 23 hours by mistake. Or because it doesn't love you any more. What we have made of time, and what we will make of time is predicated on our own misgivings. They say if you misuse time, you will never make it. Make it where, exactly? That place is just this place with a different point of view. Success is mentality. Happiness is arbitrary. So on that note, what if in this exact moment, i am exactly where I want to be - but I'm just too stupid to realise it. What, then? Am I even capable of understanding what I truly want, or am I ruled by my vicious ego? I can not delineate the capacity of my mind, but i can be certain that it is bound by a number we created to calculate our limitations. An IQ. Huh. Would you look at that. They're putting numbers on intelligence now. How many more intangible things are we going to quantify, just to satiate a need for hierarchy? I thought only time was impeding our greatness, but thank you very much for those glass ceilings. We've created a society where our greatest limitations have been placed unto ourselves. Alas, we have become slaves in their penitentiary, since we are too afraid to find out what is beyond them. But I think ultimately we must learn to accept that in this lifetime we are incarcerated by time and ceilings. And we can not outsmart either. So we must learn to build a life within their confinements. And so, as humans do, we will mindlessly build cities and sky scrapers under these ceilings. And that is okay. Because we are limited in our intelligence. But what is absolutely necessary is that for some moments in our lifetime, we do not submit to the will of time, and pause to gaze at what is beyond that which is beyond us.

- Elica Le Bon - 23rd October 2013