You've probably heard this quote before, but I feel I should re-state it : "Time is like a spectral arrow, which has been released since the Big Bang, and continues to move forward. It does not change direction, and will not, and cannot stop." Time is probably the only way in which we humans measure our mortality, for it is the only measure that, ironically, is finite for every human, albeit its infinite spectrum.
Like fine grains that tumble from the hourglass, we are all losing time - at a rate unbeknownst to us. Every moment, every millisecond of the day, we lose a portion of our life. The 'abundance of time' is probably the biggest global illusion that all human beings fail to see through.
So many people have grown to become millionaires, even billionaires, only to regret the fact that they haven't got the necessary amount of time to enjoy their wealth.
The following paragraphs are excerpts from "Time", a masterpiece of a song, sung by Pink Floyd.
"Ticking away, the moments that make up a dull day,
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way;
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown,
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way..."
Everyone has done this - twiddled their hours away, procrastinating in their own special way. Spending hours iterating through the TV channels aimlessly, watching the colony of ants march in unison - the list is endless. The attitude of 'I'll do it tomorrow', or 'I'm waiting for inspiration' is the very crux of regret in the future years. My point is this - the essence of time should be bestowed on people. Of course, that doesn't mean that people should stick to a strict regime from a young age, but it implies that every individual should know the consequences of letting the grains from the upper half of the hourglass fall down without reason.
"Tired of lying in the sunshine,
Staying home to watch the rain;
You are young, and life is long,
And there is time to kill today..."
The stanza above simply adds more weight to my statement. When we're young, we have no idea about the importance of time. To us, life is all about playing, watching cartoons, sleeping, and making friends. Fast forward a few years into teenage, and the ill-effects of bad time management skills start surfacing. We spend a lot of time on others; so much so that we don't have time for ourselves.
"And then one day you find,
Ten years have got behind you;
No one told you when to run,
You missed the starting gun..."
So you wake up one day, only to find that everyone else is ahead in the race of life. Now what do you do? You were given the chance to start with everyone else, and yet you floundered it. Running hard is not going to help; for in the race called life, once you're left behind, you stay behind.
"And you run, and you run,
To catch up with the sun, but it's sinking;
Racing around to come up behind you again,
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older,
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death..."
This is easily my favorite phrase. The genius, the relativity, and the emotion poured into this one stanza literally gives you goosebumps. Read the stanza again, I implore you. Filter through every word with minuscule detail, and try to absorb what the writer wants to make you empathize. What it says is this - you're running not one, but two races; one with the others, and the other, with yourself. Up ahead in the distance, you see your conscience, or at least an image of yourself, of where you should have been, had you not wasted the hours offhandedly. Alas, however; it's too late. The time you had been given has been consumed. No matter how hard you run, you're never going to catch up with that self.
"Every year is getting shorter,
Never seem to find the time;
Plans that even come to naught,
Or half a page of scribbled lines;
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way,
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say..."
This one hits you hard as well. As you start noticing the enormity of the value of time, your workload piles on. Soon, you're so engulfed by your priorities, you have no time for your loved ones. One second, everyone's with you, and the next, everything and everyone is gone. Just... gone. Before you could even act upon the lost time, the current happenings moved on.
And that's how you're stuck. Stuck in an endless loop, trying to right your previous wrongs. You'll always lag behind. As the famous quote goes, "time and tide wait for no one."
So cherish time. Cherish every moment you're on this planet. Live your life in such a way that you should never regret a moment of it, whilst reminiscing about it (your life) in the aged years.