The Power of Time

Illustration by Maryam.

Lately, I have been pondering on the concept of time. Sometimes time itself, the idea of lost opportunities can cloud our vision. At times we feel compelled to live backwards, at times it i
imprisons us in schedules, meetings, deadlines and due dates. Time can constrain us and limit us but it can also cause a certain amount of organization to our life. Time is slow when you are young but scarily goes quite fast when you are old. Time slows and thickens our eyelids. Time can also make things seem better in hindsight.  

Time can encapsulate a certain moment. When you hear a song, smell a certain aroma , when you feel a certain shoe. There you are whooshing back to the time you put on your favorite jacket freshman year or the way you looked as the moonlight spilled out on your friend’s faces.

Time is also a mirage. There are things which surpass time, like our Spirit, and God and love. Love can only deepen with time , even if it is no longer the same kind of love we had before.  If we truly love something it goest with us when we die… where time doesn’t really exist anymore. 

Our concept of time can also be different from culture to culture. How quickly we lead our lives, how much we care about losing time, how much of a time span goes from one thing to the next.  Sometimes, it can cause cultural misunderstandings.

 

Somehow, in this day and age we have become impatient. We measure things in term of how fast something is, how it takes less time it is somehow efficient. We can no longer sit through the movies that our grandparents used to watch which had a slower pace. We cannot possibly wait more than one minute for a song to download.  And this impatience, this anxiety becomes something that imprisons us.  We no longer are able to just live, rest , breathe. Drink in. Something is always in the way , we find that life has to have some meaning, or something has to be done to pass the time.

I spend too much time waiting, too much time trying to not be bored. I spend less time efficiently than I should.  I grow weary of the grey hairs on my head and think about time past.

We are strong with Time. We use it selfishly, only with the things that matter to us or our loved ones. We use time to be responsible. But very rarely do we use time to do things that benefit people other than ourselves.

And we try to barter with time, we try to stop time we try to steal time. We try our best for others to make time for us. We make time for what we love but we make excuses to make time for what we hate or are afraid of. Giving time to someone you love is the best and most precious gift.
People tell me they don’t have time to read. For that I say, I make time to read while I wait in line, while I am in the bathroom and the bath. I read in the car, I read in the train and in the airport and airplane. I read before I go to bed. I read because I make time for it. Because I love it.
The most painful thing is when we can’t love someone enough to make time for them. I wrote this poem about a boy who could never make time for me, so I stole a second of his time. I wish I had known that I was worth more than a second. In the end, time belongs to no one but God ( if you are religious) and the universe.

( this poem was originally in spanish and flows better in that language sorry!)
The Stolen Second

” If I had the power”
I wondered on a blue striped day
I would rob all your time
I would put you in a universe
Where you exist everywhere and nowhere
And your time would be only mine.
( It was originally in spanish so it makes more sense like that)

But you would be able to come sing unto my windowsill
But if I robbed your time
How could I know how you extend your wings
How could you distinguish the pulsating colors ?
The sun would not paint your song
This is selfish, it is not you
No that time is not mine, but yours..

In a restless night by the moonlight beam
I had a wild solution
I would steal a second
Just a second
Which is yours, only yours.

A little speck,
That second to be placed in the most hidden secret balcony
And in the secret of my secret I would keep it

That second
So that you would not forget me in the universe
A fragment , a thread
Half a note of a song

Would you feel sadness over it’s loss?
Or the business of life would make you unable to remember
Beloved, treasured second
For it is no longer yours, but mine

A second containing the salt
And the breezes of memory
Nostalgia’s perfume
Experiences , sadness
Thinned wings in the infinite cosmos
A voice in the crowd
High tide, low, tranquil turqouise
Chaotic, undefined , perpetual
Molded, transformative
And inside, so inside when you see it
You can feel
The taste of melancholy
The frenetic energy
A song of the soul
Because it is not just yours, but mine

Just one second,
Writing blunder inconsistencies
No direction
With no known knowledge
Big impulsive solid heart
Palpitating in a perpetual rhythm
Constructing experience in marble towers

Second, beloved second
I sang you songs of time
So that you would not mourn the loss of your brothers
But it useless… in vain..
That second… what second?
It disperses like feathers
Because it was never mine, but yours

That second, small second, fragile second
That dies like an orchid
Without being able to feed itself with your memory
And your spiritual battles
And the launch of your neurons
And the beating of your heart
Time does not freeze…
It dies indistinct, in shadow.

And it’s ghost, that flies into the stars
To the cusp of the universe
Because it was never mine, or yours,
It was always of Another

It becomes something else,
That transcends the wall of time,
As the drum of it’s beat is heard
The most secret of secrets
Is enveloped inside a sacrifice
Phoenix, of a sweet voice,
That stretches to the sky, Venus,
Escaping in dreams,
IN laughter,
In the infinite waves

And in that second another is born
And another, and another, and another
Life without life
Stars of the same Sky
The Beauty reflected in a soul
Divine Eternity
United
The cosmos without cosmos
Because the end has no end
Because it was never mine, or yours,
It was always of Another.

Enjoy this RSA animate cartoon about the secret powers of time which inspired this post.

Embracing Pain and Wearing your Battle Scars

 

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers ”  The Fault in our Stars

I came across an old poem of mine about my scars / pain that I was going through at the time and realized how stupendously self absorbed I was. Ah… the beauty of youth when you think you have it all figured it out. But it got me think of the subject of tests…

A friend of mine once told me that some tests are ones that we choose for it to happen, and there are those that happen because we need to grow. I wonder how he feells about this now, when he has such tests that he is in a wheelchair and half paralyzed with AIDS even though he is still relatively young.

Some sadness never leaves us. Some scars we will never truly recover from, and lay a heavy burden on our hearts.   There are cuts too deep to ever fully heal from. At times, like tonight they feel anew, and at others you feel saddened from a distance like watching a scene unfold that you wish went differently.

” Pain is like fabric. The stronger it is. The more it’s worth”. The Fault in our Stars

But sometimes we can get so caught up in our own version of sadness that we do not realize that out there, millions of people are suffering similar things.  We are not unique in our scars. Everybody hurts, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Instead, we put on a brave face to the world,  put on our masks to be accepted into society. We say, we’re o.k. and no one bothers to find out if it’s true because they too are wrapped up in their own pain.

And that pain, because a thing in of itself  a festering cancer which eats us up for awhile.  Or it can simply be buried so deep that you will only let it out on random occasions and it cuts so deep that people get scared by the ferocity of it’s pain.

No, we choose not to learn from the test. We become bitter, entrenched in our own case of sadness. We lock in ourselves and mistrust anything that comes along. We choose to believe in darkness . We can see darkness, we can taste it. But light? That require faith. That requires a will to get up and be brave.

It requires looking beyond yourself, and trying to serve others. Because if we did, if we got of our own head space we realized we weren’t that alone and we weren’t that different. And then we would channel that pain into learning, we would try to make and create an experience. If we are brave, we could realize that those scars , those scars are swords to make us who we are today. If we took it on ourselves to shine bright, to dream big to find beauty.  We wouldn’t let it win. Because our worst enemies? It isn’t those around us, it’s ourselves. 

 

i can see her clearly now
her voice echoed in cobwebs
A distant figure
blurred within time

a silhouette in a moon tinted beach
she comes to me in dreams
her eyes swallowed by goblins
There is something skitterish in her eyes

as her mouth overflows with snakes

Her chestnut brown hair ensared
Like children caught in cobwebs
her smile is pasted on carefully
Pieces that don't seem to fit quite right

She echoes softly to the moonlight
Making sure the rivers don't see her tears
Her eyes caress
Moon tinted beaches

She does not live in this world
But lives in glass and crystal

she echoes softly to the moonlight

so the rivers dont see her tears

her vest is open exposing her white lacy bra

but she is unaware of any sexuality

i see her eyes

carresss blue tinted skies

she does not live in this world
but one of glass and crystal
walking midnight gardens of jasmine

while black silhouettes wait for the darkness to 
descend quietly on circles i her eyes
her venus body creeping those horizons she is beautiful  lips

and bright smiles
but she doesn’t see it
her voice overflowing with rainbow



her arms cover from the storms of insults

ugly fat stupid clumsy...

she hovers in corners
and doesnt see the swords poking her back pocket
or the steel breast stitched to her side

 Blinded to  the light pouring out at her fingertips
she has no concept of evil
she lets the bruises descend on her once untouched ski

as they become scars

 she lets the words swallow her beauty
she lets them take away her rainbow words
and stow away her magic in ugly tinted jars
as she decides to die in gray twilight

 dear child
didnt u believe in the pumpkin?
she looks at me now

trying for me to forgive
the ghost i see before me
the rolls of fat that spill out
vanished beauty
but i am stronger now
i wouldnt want to take her back
there is a strange beauty
in imperfection

( poem written at age 18.... not sure if I have the same perspective now   
I love this quote from Abdul Baha about suffering :

 ”The mind and spirit of man advance when he is tried by suffering. The more the ground is ploughed the better the seed will grow, the better the harvest will be. Just as the plough furrows the earth deeply, purifying it of weeds and thistles, so suffering and tribulation free man from the petty affairs of this worldly life until he arrives at a state of complete detachment. His attitude in this world will be that of divine happiness. Man is, so to speak, unripe: the heat of the fire of suffering will mature him. Look back to the times past and you will find that the greatest men have suffered most.”