Time and its Perpetual Cycle

When times are bliss, and you can't get enough of life. When times are harsh, and you seek continual escape. When you want to relax for a second, to lay without worry and take a deep breath. Time is always moving. Tick, tick, tick. Everything stops, your very heart stops beating but time continues to tick. It's a complex thing, the most complex and powerful thing there is. Time is life, time is death, time is god, time is love, time is it all. 

 

Times power reigns much farther than its fleeting nature. It is the enemy of the delusional, as time eventually destroys all false realities. It is the plague of the thinker who is stuck in a maze in their own mind with no hints of escape. It is a constant reminder of the frugalness of existence and how small we really are. So, what shall one do against this mighty unwavering, unbeatable foe? What can one even do? The absurdist would say why bow to what has already won, you are here so rebel by struggling on. The nihilist would find it to be a thing not worth lamenting on, as death is there what does it matter when it comes. The stoic would vow to make the most of the precious time given and to honor its inevitability. 

 

So many paths to the same straight line. So, what must we do on this journey, how can you accept the poison that eats you away till you become nothing? 

 

First you must seize the now, carpe diem, make the most out of the present you live in. The past is out of your hands, the future out of reach, but the present is yours. If the world is in your hands don't leave it on your bedside table to attempt to conquer on another day. Now, now is all you truly have. 

 

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may/Old Time is still a-flying/And this same flower that smiles today/Tomorrow will be dying." - Herrick, (To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time).

 

Of course, this is a preposition easier said than done. Not because of lazy, or hesitance, or fear, but that the feat is an impossible one. Even if one tries with full intent to make it happen, they will soon realize every so often that they have fallen short and will vow to try harder to find the same result. Acceptance changes that though, unconditional acceptance makes all okay. Again, this is another feat that is much easier said than done, but perhaps it is not so hard to just let go. Why hold on to your stubborn self who thinks that they can perhaps slow time down? Live in the moment, fight against it, but fight in a way that knows loss is incoming. Fight with the highest stakes and absolutely no stakes. 

 

"I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it." - Faulkner, (The Sound and the Fury).

 

When I found that I could think of every one of my future fears with a solemn but nevertheless dutiful acceptance i felt true liberation. Sure, suffering is to come, along with tragic change but what can I do accept living in the now and trudging on. Because what is life but a journey forward with shackled hands pulled by a carriage driven by time.

 

"It's all right. It's like stumbling on a rock on the roadside. It's petty, a small thing. The place you want to go is more distant, farther off. So, it's all right. You'll stand up. And you'll start walking. Soon." - Miura, (Berserk).

 

Say you realize that you must do all you can in the present and that preserving time is a necessary but doomed battle, the next step is questioning. You must search inside yourself to find the contentment that time scalds away. Perhaps no question is stronger than one that forces you to reflect on your most core beliefs.

 

"Has anything you've done made your life better?" (American History X). 

 

Firstly, what exactly does it mean for your life to become "better." Sure, the term is subjective, but just what values of yours align with something that is a positive growth. That is what you must find, that is the question you must be able to answer. There is no right or wrong path in life, there is just the path you take, and that path will feature your many failures, your many regrets and pain. You will hurt those you love, the ones you love will hurt you, but still, you must tend to their wounds and hope they do the same. This is the curse of being human! And with this curse comes your upmost responsibility to enlist something positive in yourself. Take it from the grimmest of the grim, it is easier to be upset at the world then not. Life is unfair, a cruel bargain even, but resigning with that is no way to live! It is absurdity in the absurd, it is a curse in a hell. Figure yourself out, figure out what your nature and nurture has led you to become. Figure out what the presence or lack of presence of your parent’s puppet hands has done. Figure out what you love, what you seek, because in all life is about being able to wake up in the morning with a smile. Without reason, without merit. Sure, life is a tale of shadows and light and that there will be undoubtedly many days where you wake up with a sure frown or with nothing at all, but that does not change the value of satisfaction. The value of love, comfort, of joy!

 

"Medicine, law, business, engineering: these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for." (Dead Poets Society).

 

And on top of all of this, on top of the trickiest and slipperiest of slopes, one must factor in that you must do this now. You must begin the questions at this moment, because time is running out my friend. Sure, there is much sand left in the glass, but that sand will end, and what must come surely comes before you even realize it. 

 

"Unless you love, your life will flash by." (The Tree of Life).

 

But time is a beautiful thing too, it is latent labyrinth that can be as nourishing to the mind as it can be destructive. Think of human life, I have discussed already how we live a life made by our own path, but nonetheless a straight line. Point A to B. We are born at A, and all we live, all we grow, all we learn, all we hurt, is the line up to point B till we die. And that is that, ghastly but the truth. 

The beautiful thing about cognitive ability, is it holds no bounds. It is truly infinite. Think if our life was lived a little different. Say we are still born at point A (the humans we are) but say from there well. Things are more non-linear. There is a start, and somewhere amidst all that lovely chaos there is our end. But what if chaos was there instead of a line? We didn't live past, present (now), and future. But we lived by emotion, or thought, or by something completely out of our control. We saw the future as we live in the past till, we see the past as we live in the present till we live in the present and see the present till we live in the future and see the present till we live in the past and we see the future and till we continue this cycle in so many different cycles and so many different ways. But why do I bring this up, more than just hypothetical thought and contemplation think of it this way. It is hard to stomach that we must die and that there is nothing we can do about the fact or a majority of things leading up to the fact. Imagine that but in a world where you see the finish long before you actually get there. You see your first heart break, your most intense pain, you see your loved ones die and how they die, you see even yourself die, but yet you must continue on. Mercy is the universe that we are not subject to this kind of world, but the merit in thinking about it is plentiful. Learn how to accept so hard that you would not falter your life even if you saw it all. 

 

"Despite knowing the journey and where it leads, I embrace it. And I welcome every moment of it." Villeneuve, (Arrival).

"If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things? Maybe I’d say what I felt more often." Villeneuve, (Arrival).

 

Is it possible that time exists only as long as conscious does? I mean who’s to say dinosaurs were truly a thing (fossils are), or who’s to say that ancestors even existed before you yourself first opened your eyes (science). Does anything truly matter if you weren't there to experience it? How much of our history is true, probably not a lot at all. How much of anything is true, not a lot at all. I mean think about it, it’s all so absurd. The concept of existence and life and conscious. Of waking up as yourself every day, of space, of death, of love, of people, of anything. None of it makes sense, so why do the things we don't even experience have to make sense. What if existence was born with your birth and it shall die with your death. What if time was born with the birth of homo sapiens and it shall die with our death. Things only matter if you're here for them. This doesn’t make those dead artists who became loved after their time had left less great, this doesn't make your loving family line you have furthered useless after you die, this just means that the focal part of your existence is now, when you're here. Nothing makes sense, put your head down and accept it and make the most of you can with this little time you are given. Your efforts shall hopefully flower those who come after, but only after you have nourished yourself first. 

 

"Reality is inside the skull." Orwell, (1984)

 

Time is a flat circle. Now this phrase has roots from Schopenhauer, to Nietzsche, to even the fictional Rust Cohle, as a stance of pessimist expression. Everything you have done and ever will do you will do over and over again. The futility of man perhaps and our continued mistakes time and time again. The endless suffering, we shall face with no escape as even death brings us right back to this flaming wheel of hell. But I don't know when I saw this line it struck a different chord inside of me. Which is exactly what art and literature should do to one. Everyone is their own artist, and other peoples work should awaken the work inside the viewer. Rust Cohle says "Death created time to grow the things it would kill" but i don't know time continues after death. Time is there even if nothing is there to die. Why could time not have created life just to kill it over and over again. Time is a godlike and cruel thing, surely its cruelty could spread so far as to eternal punishment. The point isn’t if time truly or truly is not a circle full of repetition, and that this life I live, this sentence I write, I already have done before an infinite amount of times and will do an infinite more. The point is this, we are subject to time in whatever form it shall come. Even if time is a circle with death and loss repeated without escape, we have sunsets, we have laughter, we have the soft breeze of the wind. We have the beautiful music of the morning birds, we have the beautiful touch of someone you love, we have an able heart that feels perhaps too much. Time is a straight line, time is a nonlinear eruption, time is conscious, time is a flat circle, it matters little. Time is a means to love, time is a precious clock that counts down till your end, time is a catalyst for change and new beginnings, time is the very frontmost aspect of every integral part of life, but yet I embrace it.