Next, as we adjust the eye-piece of the telescope and zoom in closer on our lives, we stumble upon how time creates strife in relationships. A dedicated mother is heartbroken when she asks her headstrong teenage child to run an errand, for she is almost immediately greeted by a nonchalant, “I don’t have ‘time’ for it Ma!”.Lovers part ways as the spouse or the fiancée does not have enough ‘time’ to investing the relationship. It is amazing to observe that years ago William Penn had voiced, “Time is what we want the most, but use the worst”. It is only when we are done hurting others do we realize what blunt d***hes we have been. All are prayers then being to sound like, “God, if only I had ……..” – but almost immediately life repartees and teaches us an invaluable lesson – You can do whatever you want to now, but can never go back and do it again differently. Elizabeth Allen in her ‘Rock me to sleep’had earnestly wished, “Backward turn backward, O Time in your flight, Make me child again just for to - night!”. But alas all such whims and fancies have remained confined to the pages of poetry books, and are yet to see the light of day. Time has always been a one-way street and so far Physics has not given us much hope to believe that it is going to be something different anytime soon.
There is a time to speak up, and a time to remain silent. A time to learn and a time to teach. A time to listen and a time to be heard. A time to lose and a time to gain. And for all these things, the time is NOW! And depending upon what we make of ‘now’ do we have a missed opportunity, a lucky break, or a beautiful serendipity. As my soliloquy draws to a close, and I ruminate about the seconds which had transformed into minutes, which in turn, had metamorphosed into hours, and had flown by me in the bygone years, nothing makes more sense than the celebrated lines from Pink Floyd’s psychedelic composition ‘Time’ –
“Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is a time to kill today.
And then are day you find Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun.”
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