on time, as usual

yesterday was spent running from one engagement to the next: haircuts and wedding planning and ice cream and Christmas tree decorations hung by a room full of heathens and non-believers. there were cookies and chips and homemade deserts and somehow i even managed to watch a forty-five minutes worth of football. it seems that the holiday festivities have descended upon us, and by the time of our third rendezvous i found myself bypassing the birthday cake and opting instead for a bottle of water.

one cannot live on sugar and cheese alone, but this is beside the point.

the point is that a (soon-to-be) former student of mine wrote a poem about time, and it struck a chord with me, probably because the ticking of clocks seems to be my central preoccupation of late. i have a thesis clock and a graduation clock and a wedding clock and a work clock and damn near any other type of clock you can imagine.

in fact, sometimes my yin even lets me listen to her biological clock, but
this is also beside the point.

the point is that my (soon-to-be) former student's poem got me to thinking about time in a different way and brought to mind interesting paradox:

time is eternal... yet always passing.

now, i know this isn't true in an Einsteinian sense. time does have a beginning and an end, which correspond respectively to the Big Bang and (if it happens) the Big Crunch. that being said, however, one still has to marvel at the exceptional life span of this scam we call time. this begs the question: why does time last so long?

the answer rests, paradoxically, in its very impermanence; and i don't think it's too far fetched to attribute time's longevity to its willingness to die. (the word abhaya comes to mind.) i wonder what it would be like if we could apply this same sort of non-attachment to our own lives.

what if we welcomed the passing of each moment...

as readily as its arrival?

what if we could really comprehend what it means...

to live each moment like it was our last?

what if we realized that this moment, and every moment yet to come...

already is?

would the ticking of clocks...

sound any different?