(a spiritual thought for the day)
One of the most absurd things about life is how we’re all chained to the relentless forward march of time. Tick-tock, tick-tock, time never stops in its inexorable progress toward our deaths. Everything we do and everything that happens to us has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That formula is endlessly stressful. Time obliges us to plan ahead for every single thing on our daily calendar, no matter how small, mapping out how long it will take to drive to an appointment and show up on time (or, we ask ourselves, would it be quicker to take the bus? Will we get home in time to cook dinner? Will we have any time left afterwards to relax?) Forever caught up in these burdensome calculations, we tell ourselves, maybe it would be better to cancel the appointment and just stay home.
Nor are we ever satisfied with the pace of time. We seem always to be trying to speed it up or slow it down. When we’re waiting our turn in the prescription line at Walgreens we want time to move more quickly, but when we’re clinking glasses with our beloved one on the beach at sunset, we whisper, “please, Time, please slow down.” If only time were a metronome and we could continually adjust it to the pace we desire, increasing or decreasing its tempo at our will.
To look on the bright side, everything in life has a beginning, a middle, and an end, which of course is the most basic requirement for storytelling. Without time there would be no stories to tell. But everything in this world of ours has its opposite. Without darkness, there is no light. Without silence, there is no sound. So what of time? Surely it too must have an opposite. Our name for its opposite is eternity, but we tend to imagine eternity as an infinite continuation of the march of time after our death, tick-tocking on forever.
However, a more compelling and arguably more accurate idea is that the opposite of time is simply non-time. Non-time is or can be conceived as an existence entirely outside of time. In other words, non-time is an infinite present. If there is a God, God dwells in that infinite present. God is the Divine Presence in the present, and when we die, we are blessedly freed of the burden of time.
