When people steal your time, they’ve stolen the most valuable thing you own. Now that I better understand the brevity of life, I can see that I have been throwing away a thing I can never earn more of. I’m left stupefied by my naive belief that I was doing the right thing by offering so many unworthy people my true wealth, but such is the price for learning about others and ourselves.
Why is time so precious to me and apparently of little consequence to others? The answer is complex, multifaceted, and maybe too difficult to answer. For me, I believe it started with a love of books at a young age and how they brought me to other eras and places. I enjoyed lingering with people throughout history as they shared their stories with me. I wasn’t so much interested in my own moment as I was in the discovery of experiences that were imbued with mystery, drama, and the exploration of exotic locales as written about by people across time. Growing older, I started cherishing the stories that were coming out of my own experiences as the book of John was being written.
I explored more aspects of my relationship with time and how I could experience it. The more I knew about it, such as its limitations and how much of it I was allocated under the best of circumstances, I grew increasingly protective of this diminishing resource. This doesn’t help explain my assumption that many of the people around me don’t seem to hold time in such high esteem as I do, so I continue to ponder the larger questions of how time is of value to the rest of our species.
What’s of value is a broad, subjective question that incorporates the breadth of human needs, and while I recognize those complexities and personal choices, they all seem to circle back around to the one asset that’s at the core of it all: time. So again, why do others seem to me to be frittering away their time or at least acting oblivious to its incredible value?
One answer might be that they are locked in some form of perpetual adolescence in which time is still infinite. When time is limitless and forever, the desires we have are not from the past, nor are they in recognition of what lies in the future; they are the immediate needs and wants that should be satisfied in this very moment.
In my perception, time is elastically stretching back- and forward, dilating and contracting, dependent in part on whether we are in routine or finding novelty. The past is the foundation of my knowledge, and the future is the possibility of any of the potential I might be fortunate enough to acquire or exercise. My potential rests on the tools I bring to the present that allow me to sculpt tomorrow. If I sacrifice using my skills so I can put myself on equal footing with those who do not care about anything more than immediacy, then I feel that I’m throwing away the honoring of myself and the investment made to see what life is offering other than simple observation.
There is a danger of going forward with the expectations of others having acquired knowledge-driven insights, as the vast majority do not appear to care or think about things beyond their immediate needs or, at best, being able to determine if something is cool or not. The weight of awareness is upon the shoulders of those who live in the full embrace of time and who try to encounter others living similarly. We risk vulnerability when comparing knowledge if we are still naive or embarrassing the other if they are still early in their search for what illuminates the mind. The bank of knowledge is only cultivated through the acquiescence of time spent investing in oneself beyond the banality of entertainment and the engorgement of the ego on conquering life instead of winning its luxuries.
How many of my moments are used for setting up architectures for creating providence while I witness others go about trying to find the next intrusion of mindlessness to ward off their boredom? In my circular discussion, looking at my idea of normal and being witness to other’s ideas of normal, I wonder how they fail to understand that boredom arises out of a mind unable to have a conversation with itself? They are the architect of themselves but have relegated that responsibility to mass media without any regard for well-being as they are driven only by animalistic instinct. I, on the other hand, want to believe I’m building a tower to some kind of intellectual and cultural pinnacle, even when I’m simply contributing to others’ efforts to propel humanity forward.
What part of humanity cares as to why they exist, and for what purpose or have they given that responsibility over to religion? In regards to their flavor of piety, I don’t see that they are able to experience real devotion. Instead, they demonstrate a kind of moral superiority by paying lip service with their attendance at a church service for an hour a week. There is an assumption that those channeling the sermon have already done the heavy lifting thus absolving the congregation of the need to be truly holy or having to live conscientiously within the realm of awareness. They, in effect, choose to live outside of time.
Our opportunity for being is brief, and the time of existence with some minor form of purpose is even shorter due to childhood and the risk of dementia in later life. This is a double-edged sword where the dilemma of awareness might focus us on how little we will ever experience or be able to own regarding knowledge and the tools of how to use it. Not exploring this essence of being human leaves people emotionally and intellectually destitute while remaining vaguely aware of the void that can require some form of medication to cope with the empty space.
The perception of permanence is built out of ignorance. In the bigger scheme of things, there is no forever in nature. While rocks, suns, and the universe might seem eternal, they, too, are a temporary occurrence that evolves over time, coming in and out of existence. The only possible thing I can conceive of that might persist longer than any form of matter is time. So when we are only afforded the briefest of moments to encounter time and learn about ourselves while in it, why do we act as though it doesn’t matter? We understand that water, soil, air, and sunlight are requirements for life, though even those precious elements that support life are mostly taken for granted.
A paradigm shift in awareness would seem in order, but I can see the necessity of that having been a requirement for the past 50 years. We’ve been ignoring the larger questions that ask if we can turn a blind eye to that which is obvious, such as the environment, how will we open our minds to that which is as esoteric and nebulous a thing, such as time and knowledge?