Monday, February 05, 2007

time

Three of my all-time favorite movies are the Back to the Future trilogy. My dad had copies of it and we would always watch them until I grew to love them as well. It is brilliantly written that each movie is interwoven with the other yet even if you watch them separately, you will still enjoy it just the same. The special effects are also superb given the year it was created.

It fascinated me about the movie is how Marty and Doc would travel through time, to different time periods to try to alter the course of events in the future or the past that had unfavorable repercussions. I got so engrossed with the whole talk about the space and time continuum, the DeLorean, and the impossible feats they accomplished that otherwise would just not be possible.

Wouldn’t it be fun to be able to travel through time? And experience for yourself what has transpired before you came to existence. To be able to know your destiny and the events that would happen to you in the future. Great Scott! That is heavy.

Unfortunately, man has yet to invent time machines. The real world would entail one to deal with the consequences of one’s decisions. One can not restore time lost.

Time is a measurable intangible object that runs ceaselessly. It ticks in its usual work-a-day pace. It transcends any physical, cultural or language barriers. Time is universal. It follows a specific set of rules and dimensions that render it standard, fixed, and permanent. There are exactly the same amount of hours yesterday as there are today. 12 hours for day and 12 hours for night. And yet some days seem longer or shorter than the others.

I have been in one-hour classes that seemed like five hours and in two hour long conversations that seems like mere minutes, in instances that were just too long to end, in events that I wished lasted forever and moments when time stood still. These things are a state of mind but it still feels incredibly real.

This reminds me of something that I read from Henry Van Dyke: Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. Hours fly, flowers die, new days, new ways pass by, Love stays.

As things take their course in our own lives, we realize that what we really want is more time. Time to rest. Time to heal. Time to think. Time to learn. Time to remember. Time to give. Time to let go. But when does it suffice?

Time is unwavering and adamant. That is one thing we can not alter. No matter if you are rich or poor, young or old, desperate or content, the indelible truth is that time stops for no man. However what we can change is how we choose to spend it.

That is perhaps why the future is unbeknownst to us. So we can learn from our past to guide our decisions and chart our course however we choose. If we learned what would transpire in the future, we would either be too proud or too disheartened to take risks in our lives which would keep us from truly living it. We would be living our lives in fear and desolation, which to me, is not like living at all.

Not knowing about the future gives us a chance to seize the day, make the most out of every opportunity, make mistakes, and learn from them. Life is in itself is short enough to live in regrets. Mistakes are not as condemnable as they are perceived to be. It just starts off that way, but it is ultimately up to the person what he/she does with it. We commit mistakes; it’s what makes us human. What truly matter is how we rise every time we fall. How we learn from our mistakes and how we become a better person for it.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and too high a spirit to be encumbered in your own nonsense.

That quotation seems like an apt way for starting the New Year. Focus on your life from day to day, for the weeks, months and years will take care of themselves. It is the little pigments of color that comprise a whole picture. Time is the one constant we can never change, what we choose to do with it is what we can change.

We ask God to graciously grant us the serenity to accept the things we can not change; the courage to change the things that we can and the wisdom to know the difference.

If you really think about it, the only thing we truly have is time. As long as we are alive, we have the time. If you knew you didn’t have much time to spend in this world, what would you do? What are you waiting for?