What is then the purpose of time?
Does one know when he/she is born? Does one know when he/she is dead? Don't we need somebody to tell us if the baby in the womb is alive or dead? or if someone who has been born is dead? How much can life support systems do to help someone continue with the process of living?
Why is everyone so fearful of death? Ever experienced a person who is dying? What is it like? Is there an urgency to matters especially when someone is told they have 3 more months to live? How often do we keep track of time then? Do we count the years, months, days, seconds of every waking moment typically? Why then does time matter when we someone tells us we are so close to dying? Is this fear of losing track of time so dreadful that we have to keep track of it?
On somedays we feel like time is moving very slow on other days it seems to fly. What if at the end of one's earthly life, there is no more time left. Just like a clock running down, human concept of time has run down and it is a spiritual life.
Humans are the only ones spending so much time worrying about the soul and spiritual matters. What if there is a concept of time, like eternity, where there is no beginning and no end. What if, we did not pay heed to that concept of spiritual reality all of our earthly life? What if the price for not heeding that call is too costly? Is there a way out? Humans spend a lot of time, money and energy trying to prolong life. When are we gonna realize that everyone dies ultimately. Every human being born has to die someday. What happens after that is the question that has plagued our understanding of what really time is. Today is all we got, Now is what we have. Seize the moment, make a change within yourself and there is only one way about it. It is better to be good than to be evil. It is better to love than to hate. It is better to prevent than finding a cure. It is better to forgive than to exact revenge. It is better that someone paid the price than none at all.
Why is everyone so fearful of death? Ever experienced a person who is dying? What is it like? Is there an urgency to matters especially when someone is told they have 3 more months to live? How often do we keep track of time then? Do we count the years, months, days, seconds of every waking moment typically? Why then does time matter when we someone tells us we are so close to dying? Is this fear of losing track of time so dreadful that we have to keep track of it?
On somedays we feel like time is moving very slow on other days it seems to fly. What if at the end of one's earthly life, there is no more time left. Just like a clock running down, human concept of time has run down and it is a spiritual life.
Humans are the only ones spending so much time worrying about the soul and spiritual matters. What if there is a concept of time, like eternity, where there is no beginning and no end. What if, we did not pay heed to that concept of spiritual reality all of our earthly life? What if the price for not heeding that call is too costly? Is there a way out? Humans spend a lot of time, money and energy trying to prolong life. When are we gonna realize that everyone dies ultimately. Every human being born has to die someday. What happens after that is the question that has plagued our understanding of what really time is. Today is all we got, Now is what we have. Seize the moment, make a change within yourself and there is only one way about it. It is better to be good than to be evil. It is better to love than to hate. It is better to prevent than finding a cure. It is better to forgive than to exact revenge. It is better that someone paid the price than none at all.
posted by Hermit | 1:37 AM
4 Comments:
That was profound man..I do agree with a lot that you say. Time is ultimately what we make out of it & unfortunately most of it is spent on either brooding over the past or in anticipating the future & in the process the present which is REALITY often gets fritterd away. I guess time also makes one spiritual..in a highly idiosyncratic manner..if u get what I mean..and that I think is the refining and re-defining moment for every person.Unfortunately for most (me included)this happens very late and only when one becomes more existential in perspective.
Thanks, Chief..better late than never..worldly wisdom only fills the gap between ignorance and stupidity, it takes Godly wisdom to tell the difference between the two..
Reality, I believe is a concept that is still under development..because it is based on sense perceptions and as we know our sense perceptions might not be accurate all the time (delusions/hallucinations!!!)..
Have you seen the movie "a Beautiful Mind" by the end of it, it will make you wonder which parts of the movie was real and which was not..it is based on the true story of a nobel prize winner..
Agreed to a point...reality is what our senses (or lack of them!!)permit us to experience vis-a-vis what lies outside the Human being...but then it does exist and perhaps our senses are inadequate/inappropriate??? to fathom and percieve it 'objectively'. Reality exists and is perhaps in its true sense not idyosyncratic but global.Where does time come in then?? Time gives us the contextual dimension to enable us comprehend whatever little we can given the inadequacies of our sensual perceptions.
Let me elaborate my contention a li'l bit more. The bridge collapse in Minneapolis is 'reality'. A survivor in his interview attributes his escape with his family..though he plunged 55 ft (not into the water..onto another slab of the dangling disaster)as an act of God. Another says his family survived coz of the seat belts!! Yet another lady says it was a great free fall as in an amusement park ride!!When the bridge was commissioned in 1967 it was hailed as an architectural marvel and a boon to the 100,000 vehicles which used it everyday. Investigations into its causes tomorrow & later may reveal structural defects, possibly quality material defects!! but the bridge has been consistently evaluated in 2005, 06 and the latest was in progress. Obviously no warning signs identified, though 2 yrs back the US transport dept recommended replacement not rehabilitation of the bridge!!So are all these perceptions not reality based?? I would not dispute their individual experiences and possibly interpretation of "REALITY"...what then accounts for their 'inability' to percieve reality (the collapse)as it happened in real time?? Why did the first car go into the Missisipi and the driver unable to prevent the inevitable while another further down the line says he saw the smoke and dust and slammed his breaks and was left dangling on the edge. Thats the beauty of time!!it gives meaning to your existence within a contextual perspective.
You may not agree entirely with what I have expressed...but that my friend is the beauty of this idea. Does that then make time...abstract, phenomenological?? NO...it exists in a state of perpetual dynamism to comprehend which may require billions of years of evolution of the homo sapien race.... if I were to subscribe to the views of Uncle Darwin (fertile imagination!! referred also by Shakespeare as 'A midsummer's night dream...must look him up in Westminister Abbey)
Hope I have added to the confusion with my 2 penny bit...Cheerios Selwyn
I agree Time does give meaning to existence. what each person turns out to be in the long run is anybody's guess at any given point in time, but given a long interval in time it makes sense for each person and for those around that person (Astrologers and soothsayers have made some good moolah predicting future events for those who want to know what they will eventually turn out to be!!!)
So anyway, when a person falls of a bridge, and dies, time seems to run out on that person (as seen on tombstones) while others who survive such incidents claim that they have been given an extended lease to live (lucky to be alive)..they ascribe meaning to the events that happen to their lives (post incident) and sometimes curse God when things don't go their way..
Eventually, I guess everyone does take stock of where they have been in life and what they have accomplished..In that sense, folks feel like time is running out for them and start pushing the next generation to go beyond where they have been in life (parents prodding children to achieve goals that they could only dream of)
So the cycle continues, but why in the first place did we start calculating time as we know today as AD and BC?
Is it just an useful way to keep track of time or does it also have something to do with the reality of eternity?
A midsummer night's dream..now that's interesting..
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