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Time, An Illusion or Verity

Time has a funny way of playing the friend and foe. Usually, we fail to see the missed minutes, hours, days that evaporate without warning or notice while we are pining for another chance, a redo, the ability to start over.

Each day, those of us who are lucky enough to open our eyes after a night of slumber, we are gifted a do-over. Yet, for many, we spend this gift of a new day in desperate attempts to figure out and relive the past, further robbing ourselves of the ticking clock of the present day.

We are told time is an illusion yet stare into the mirror and see the blatant effects of time traipsed all over our aging body. We hear it in the sound of our children’s voices as they shift into deeper tones moving away from the sweet infantile squeaks that pull on our heart strings. We face time’s demise as we peer over the lifeless body of a loved one who will no longer live by a clock or calendar with anticipation or dread.

Time has been compared to bank balances that replenish with the sun and deplete with the moon. We are advised to spend it wisely. This analogy contradicts that time is an illusion by forcing us to see it as measurable.

As the days pass and blend together, regret seeps in as we ponder if the end of a week or month was lost, stolen, or wasted.

As we lived those days through thoughtless action, we make promises to do better, do more, be more present and awake. We barter with time, begging for more, pleading for another chance to get it right only to find ourselves tripping in our self-made grooves on the trail of our journey, walking in circles at times fooling ourselves into believing the scenery has changed.

Time, the shape-shifting sprite of life appearing in moments of life as joy, suffering, faith, fear, taunting us with measurements and deadlines, tricking us into believing the opportunities are limitless, yet failing to remind us they are fleeting. Some moments we fail to recognize the impermanence of it all, so we bathe in our self-produced misery, aching for the time we are living in to end. Impermanence, the beauty and pain of endings, is a meaningful souvenir of life’s memories of moments once lived. We lose time in the wallows of suffering and punish ourselves with hindsight.

Still, time goes on, healing wounds if we allow.

Tick, ticking away with each breath, marked by the sunsets of each day, celebrated on the anniversary of our incarnation on Earth. A never-ending cycle of life fading into death, youth transforming into maturity.

Want to make time stop? Live each day as if it were your last. No more postponements, no excuses, no regrets. No more doing what you don’t love.

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