Shining Thru

Why do people worry about what is in the past when there is no way to change it?  Why try to change something that is unchangeable?  Regret serves no purpose.  Instead of spending all of the time regretting the past, I wish more people would simply examine the past with an open mind and learn from it to make the future better.  Why try to undo what is already done while the future is still undecided.  The future can still be changed.  The future still hangs in the balance.  People are spending all of their time regretting the past and that only leads to not paying enough attention to the present or where things will go from where, which leads to more regrets.

I feel bad for people that live in the past instead of the present.  Although there are some people who don’t consider the present enough because they are so focused on the future…it’s like they fail to realize that we can’t get to the future without the present and that all of the choices we make now are the choices to keep them on the path to the future they want.  I know we don’t have complete control over anything like that…but why worry about what’s not right here???

What is time?  A stream of moments that are linked together through life?  Moments that are compacted to the point that they live side by side and have to find a way to harmonize?  I often wonder if time even exists….

Who is to say that we didn’t simply create time and time lines to make communication easier….what if everything happens on the same plane instead of in a linear fashion?  What if all aspects of time:  past, present, future, are all happening right now, together and always have been?

What if the reason we don’t have control over what happens in time is because it all happens simultaneously?  What if time travel were possible, but because the only people who ever looked into it, looked for a linear version of time that doesn’t exist, and missed the possibility all together???  Weird thoughts come about time.  You never know what to expect in your own life time or what will happen next….what if it has already happened?  There’s a thought that will throw you for a loop…like talking about multiple planes of existence.

What if we didn’t acknowledge time with a clock and a calendar?  What if we didn’t hold ourselves to the confines of the minute and hour?  What would life be like if time was an abstract theory instead of something we have made concrete with our every day practice of it….

It’s strange how much influence one moment can have on a person or on a day or on a life….One moment of intense pleasure can erase a lot of pain and disappointment.  One moment of disappointment can cause a life time of pain and influence if someone allows themselves to dwell on it.  A moment of time can, if allowed by a person, create an obsession with either guilt or pleasure to the point that it influences the rest of their life….

A moment can be any length of time.  It could be in a smile, an event, a day, a month, a phase of life….It could be in a movie or a book that you read, or maybe a person that you meet or hear speak and are introduced to new ideas.

Have you ever been controlled by your feelings in a situation?  Or had an incredible time that makes up for a lot of failures, mistakes, and obstacles…something that is so wonderful it gives you positive energy and encouragement to simply keep going….even if you felt like you were on the edge of giving up that one moment makes it so that you can keep moving…??  It’s an amazing experience.

I think there are moments in all of our lives when we wish we had a freeze ray like Dr. Horrible.  If we could just stop time for a little while and get all of those nagging chores done and still have time to relax, or simply to stop things in order to get our time together.  I can completely understand why someone would want to invent something like that.  Sometimes time goes by so fast that you don’t know where it went.  Other times change is so scary that you want to just freeze things so that you can keep them the same…just a little longer, put off the inevitable change a little bit longer.  Or maybe you’re experiencing such a great moment that you want it to last for awhile.  Who wouldn’t want to be able to stop time?

If you were able to stop time for a little while, what would you do with it?  Take some time to relax?  Get a massage?  Get things done?  Go on a vacation?  Would stopping time actually solve anything?  Would all of the problems and the fear of change still be there when you eventually unfroze everything?  Would you need or want to unfreeze things?  It’s an interesting thought….Like time travel, I wonder if it would be as great as it is in theory.  Theories are great because they never go wrong…everything works in theory.  I still think I would like the option of stopping time….Making sure there is time for all aspects of life.  Not caught up with work and ignoring the social life at all….What moment would you freeze, or who would you freeze if you had the time?

For those of you who have seen Dr. Horrible in action, you know that the freeze ray freezes a person, so who would you choose to freeze in time?  That one person who wont stop talking or who is always knocking on your door or calling your phone?  Is that the person you would like to just sort of take a time out for and stop time for them?  Would you pick the person who annoys you the most?  Or maybe the person you want to look at the most, but just don’t have time for at the moment?…..So many possibilities.

Why does it seem like there is always something to wait for….sometimes small things sometimes large.  Waiting for a certain time, for the work day to end, for the day to start, for a check to clear, for a pay check to come in, for a decision……

Sometimes you get so distracted waiting for things that you forget to live in the moment, enjoy what you have right now…..you can’t live your life waiting for something else, even though sometimes you may really need or really really want those things. 

Sometimes you need to convince yourself not to dwell on the past or on the future…either way, you’re not living in the moment.  Always regretting is just as bad as always waiting.  If you are worried about a time that is not now then you will never really live.  Living in another time only prevents you from seeing the joys you have right in front of you.  On the same note, you must grab those opportunities and joys before they disappear and the option is gone, lost forever because you wouldn’t embrace it.  It is important to always see what is there in front of you and to enjoy it while you can.

Grabbing the Past

Snatching the moment

Not wanting to let it go

Not wanting time to move

Wanting to stay in the moment

The precious moments that make life happy

The precious moments that make you want to live

The moments that remind you of what beauty is.

We flip through the memories

The pages that have caught the glimpses

The pages that we want to live in

Because those pages have the happy moments

The love that you know

The love that you’ve seen grow

In those pages you can see,

The love and beauty that make life worth living.

Time is flying

Joy, Peace, Excitement, Tears

All a part of life

It runs by you in a cloud

A haze of emotions and experiences

Life

You don’t know when it will be over

Just play as if your at the last level

Keep it moving

Don’t watch it drive by you and leave you in the dust

Sitting and waiting gets you nowhere

Worrying and Waiting is Nothing

Useless, they get you nowhere

Better to press on and through

Live life, instead of wasting time.

Time seems to slip through your fingers…why is it that we never have enough time?  How do you decide what is more important, how much time to spend on a given thing, idea, or person?  How can people split their lives and sometimes not even realize they are doing it?  I don’t think I ever realized how many decisions a person makes each day….especially when it has to do with time.  What time do you get up in the morning so you can be ready on time?  How long do you spend picking out clothes, looking in the mirror, getting coffee and/or breakfast around?  What time do you leave for work?  What if there is a lot of traffic that morning???  These little decisions I think most of us make subconsciously, we don’t even have to think about them any more….But what about when it comes to big things…what about when the time frame is already decided for you and you have to decide what to use that time for?  You have an extra hour before the kids get home, do you:  start dinner, watch tv and relax, work on a project that’s been going on for a year, clean up before they mess it up again???  What about when you’re considering your first or next college degree….and the thought that keeps going through your mind is, do I really want to spend the next few years of my life on THAT?!! 

Time is a strange thing that controls so much of our lives, no matter how hard we try to fight against it.  Even if you’re a person who doesn’t run off of a tight schedule, I’m sure you work with or have to at least correspond with people who do… and even when it’s not a set time, there is generally a time frame that has to be followed in most things.  In most things you reach your limit for dealing with things, making decisions, and abiding by time….

Why did we ever invent time?  Was it to be able to better communicate?  Was it because they were bored and realized that the sun moved at the same pace every day?  Is it something that is naturally built into our beings?

I heard on a movie earlier today, “Today is Tomorrow.”  I’dlike to add onto that quote and make it, “Today is Tomorrow and Tomorrow will be yesterday.”   Time is an interesting thing.  Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday; these terms only have values at the moment they are spoken.  Eventually they will all be in the past, and a new day would have taken its place.  We dwell on days like Tomorrow, but maybe we should just start thinking about the now, because that’s all we’re really guaranteed. 

Why does our society insist on labeling increments of time?  Why do we live our life according to how much time there is?  Some people even go so far as to say that their reasoning for doing something is “because it’s time.”  I’ve heard this reason a lot especially in terms of a relationship.  I guess I missed the pamphlet when they gave out the time line for those. 

Does time really matter when it comes down to it?  Does it matter if it was yesterday, today, or tomorrow, when in the end you would have accomplished the same things anyway?  I think our society takes time way too seriously.  I think we should start living according to what feels right in the moment.  Some people have every day planned out for months…that would scare me.  I have goals, and I think that a general plan is great, but do have a day planner with every day filled out leaves very little room to do what you want to do.  I think I would feel like a failure when those things did not get accomplished on the exact day they were suppose to…

My goals and plans change constantly, and I like feeling like I can be open to that.  I don’t need to know what is going to happen….we can’t know what’s going to happen.  I think the more we try to control what happens by labeling it with time, and giving time frames to things like relationships the more we are going to be disappointed in the end. 

So, what is time?  Is it really hours, days, months, and years?  Or is it simply a time line of events.  “We measure our lives in coffee spoons” – a line from one of my favorite poems by TS Eliot.  I think we created labels for convenience in communication, but we have since formed our lives around those labels.  If we are measuring in time, does it matter if we use minutes, days, years, or something as simple as cups of coffee in our morning routines?  I think that maybe we should just take a look at what gets accomplished during those labels, not that we simply made it through another day according to schedule.