Time is fluid, cyclical, and relentless. It’s everywhere and unstoppable, yet we work so hard to compartmentalize it. Days, weeks, hours, minutes, we work to break time into fragments that we can cope with. Unaware and unaffected, time moves on. Perhaps there is no other way, maybe our minds are just not suited to flow with time in its ever expanding and contracting nature. We want time to move in one direction, we want ourselves to move in only one direction with it. Growth, ascension, forward movement. If time is not bringing us somewhere better we easily lose touch with our own direction. We wish to command time and bend it to our will, to believe we are capitalizing one this one element in a way that will deliver us to our goals, our hopes and dreams.
But I’ve come to believe that time has its own will. That we are as much a product of time’s fate as any other. Today’s political climate proves this to a degree, that time has its own weight, its own momentum, a pressure that sometimes binds, folds, and back up upon itself, slowing and stopping until so much weight accumulates that it bursts forth in a flood, rushing past us or carrying us along. But even this fits into the narrative of a flow of time, one that has direction, current, and inevitability.
Regardless of our view of time, and our place in it, it does seem advantageous to break it into pieces we can more easily digest, pieces of time we can hold and weigh and use to plan for our own future. A life, after all, is only one small piece of time, an amalgamation of moments we stitch together into a narrative. Simpler times have come and gone, and today’s time often seems complex, confusing, challenging and even cruel. There’s work to be done, within and without. We’re encouraged to find ourselves, to become our best selves and contribute to the solution, to the repair and replacement of flawed systems. At the same time, we’re groping for meaning, purpose, connection and love. These are the metrics we use to judge time, and our passage through it.