It is amazing the range of emotions I can experience in a span of time as short as a week. And honestly, my life isn’t even that eventful. I am stung with thoughts of futility, the idea that my ongoing quest for completeness will never be complete. With “best” being nigh unattainable in the realms of personal development, I’m happy if I can reach “good enough…I suppose.” While others have learned to settle for Plan B, I’d be satisfied just to have any plan of action in the first place. With blurred vision I stumble, wondering if the road I’m on is even a path at all and if it leads to anything besides another dead end. Yet, amidst the flurry of soaring hopes and crushing let-downs, there remains the promise of another sunrise and the simple joy of taking a deep breath and just being alive. Even when worse comes to worse, I look for the day that has no night and the moment when all my doubts and fears are blown away like a whisp of smoke. Then the dusty cracked old window by which I gaze upon life from my shadowy dank little hole will be removed and I will be out in the open, exposed and finally able to stand and face the day with unblinking eyes, forever bathed in sunlight.

Just a few thoughts to exercise me ol’ noggin (yes, I do own one. I keep it in a secret lock-box, with the key hidden under my rear bumper)

Time may very well be one of the most precious commodities on this planet (even more so than bodily fluids). Everyone starts with a certain amount of time (though how much exactly, it’s hard to know until it’s gone, convenient huh?) and there really isn’t any way to harvest more of it…yet. Once it’s gone, there’s no getting it back (at least not without a flux capacitor). People say time is money and we even talk about how we “spend” or “invest” our time, but time is a different thing altogether (like Hormel spam and email spam, one being slightly more digestible). It isn’t as if we are choosing to give away quantities of time at certain moments and then saving some amount of time by not giving it away at other moments. In that sense, we are always losing time at a fairly constant rate (unless you have some real estate on the edge of a black hole or do a fair bit of space travel. Both of which, I highly recommend). But really, can we even claim to own time at all any more than we can say we own gravity? We have no control over it since we can neither create, destroy, increase, decrease, or really manipulate time in a permanent sense (and no, that incident involving a microwave, Coke, Mentos, an aluminum brick and a small magnet doesn’t count). I think time is more like a volume that we are moving through, rather than a quantity of things that can be collected. Time, like a volume, can be utilized while itself remaining unchanged, (like that boulder in the backyard, despite how many times I’ve attempted to lift it with the force). A space can be filled, but it is still just as much a a space as before, it is not unmade, stretched, or shrunk nor is its physical location changed. This isn’t to say that space and time are always consistent and never altered, it’s just that we pesky humans don’t do much of the altering……….yet.

Another interesting thing is that we usually relate to time based on our individual perceptions of it. We say “my how time flies,” while knowing full well that the rate at which time passes has not increased. We mean that it seems as if time has passed quicker, though it really hasn’t. Personally, I think I have a very delayed perception of time. It seems to me that most people can accomplish and experience more than I can in shorter amounts of time. This leads me to believe that either everyone is just better than be or time has it out for me. Either way, it’s a real drag. If, by some strange twist of the imagination, time were my girlfriend, I think we’d be having one of those determining the relationship talks real soon (why is she always running out on me like that?). It is funny how we can personify time: time is on my side, father time, time heals all wounds. Then again, we like to personify pretty much everything (wow Personification, you’re just so open and all-encompassing, that’s what I like about you). Who knows, maybe I’m just getting older, well I can pretty much guarantee that. Whether or not time really has some kind of personal vendetta against me, I don’t know, but I have been noticing “time strain” more and more and I wonder how much one’s overall perception of time can differ from someone else’s.

In summation, (apologies to all those professional thinkers out there) time is incredibly valuable and I’d encourage everyone to pass through it in a wise and effective manner, not tripping and stumbling like someone who forgot to pay the electric bill attempting to navigate their cluttered house. And just what constitutes a proper use of time? Well that’s a whole ‘nother bottle of hot sauce (and yes, I’ll have some spam with that).

“I hate it when people say, ‘tick, tick, tick’.”

-Adrian Monk