A line I use frequently to myself is “Time is a sharp sword.” This is perhaps an old Arabic proverb.
When I repeat this line to myself, I mean that every moment is slipping into the unrecoverable past, every second we are dying and gone forever into memory at best but usually into the oblivion of forgetfulness. How many of one’s seconds does one remember? In how many of those moments was I even awake to my surroundings or my inner thoughts? I don’t dread their passing but being as mindful as possible seems that it would be a good practice.
[I started to wonder; “Is a second and a moment the same thing?’ I decided to look up the word ‘moment’ and discovered that a moment is a medieval length of time: a movement of a shadow on a sundial that amounts to about 90 seconds. A solar hour was divided into 40 momenta. Something I didn’t know till just now in this moment (since it is about 1.5 minutes long). That’s something to love about the internet. Have a question? Ask google.
Next time I say, ’I’ll be there in a moment.’ I’ll know I have 90 seconds to arrive.]
As an artist I consider that if I didn’t get my creative work out into an artifact: a painting or a collage or a drawing, I cannot make up that loss. That time, those moments are lost forever.
Is that a bad thing? Not really, but it can be if one procrastinates foolishly and does not heed the Latin phrase “Carpe Diem - Seize the day.”, which is another thing I tell myself. What am I going to accomplish? What should I be trying to accomplish? Which of the many things that could be done should be done and in what order? What are my priorities? What’s my long-range program or intention?
There are many things I procrastinate about, long held habits I would like to change or eliminate but never seem to initiate a firm commitment or establish the practice long enough to make a permanent change. Habitual things are easy to ignore and difficult to root out and new habits difficult to establish and take root. I’ll have to think about that, but I will probably forget to.
Seizing the ‘moment’ compared to the ‘day’ is very difficult. There are a lot of moments in a day, as mentioned earlier, about 40 per hour. So, there is plenty of time to accomplish something in a day but most of your moments in that day will be squandered. Hence time is a sharp sword constantly cutting away life moment by moment, breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat, second by second. Tick tock, tick tock…
‘Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.’ Steve Miller Band
Another thing I tell myself is: “There is all the time in the world, just none to waste.” Which means that one should take as much time as needed to do a thing with inner calm and attention and not be hurried or hasty in a task which will lead to carelessness and negligence and hence an unsatisfactory result. This is not to say that one cannot save time through well considered efficiency.
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Please leave a comment below! How are you dealing with time?