Time: fickle friend or bitter enemy?
There's a line from Shakespeare's Macbeth I sadly always enjoy quoting. It doesn't exactly help much either that the play has been lying on my nightstand for the past week, reminding me of the prose hidden inside:
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty place from day to day."
Oh, the pitter patter of time. To vaguely and loosely translate Shakespeare's elegant verbiage into a marriage of two modern cliches: life is short while time flies.
For the non-Shakespearean buffs unlike myself (although I encourage you to familiarize yourself with his works as much as possible), allow me to provide a bit of background on this line without giving any underlying themes or details from the play away. This line derives from a famous soliloquy found in the tragedy Macbeth. Essentially, it is an introduction to a philosophical reflection on life and death that Macbeth contemplates on. With the realization that nobody can defeat or escape death comes the understanding that days sneak past until that fatal day arrives.
Life is, after all, a "brief candle." Shakespeare's analogy, not mine.
I look back and astounded at how much has happened and how quickly it's all passed since last July. Though so many things have changed, including myself, so many things have still remained the same.
And within the past year, a year filled with so many changes, I learned one very important lesson: I have found most cliches about time to be all wrong and extremely misleading. I may be young with only an ounce of wisdom to shed, but the past year and its events have given me insight into myself, my faith and my life...all of which I feel compelled to share.
To live a life with no regrets because time flies and time is the enemy is really a bunch of nonsense.
Most of it is made to sound optimistic--to live in the moment and to realistically remind yourself to look for brighter days. To have no regrets means to take everything as a learning experience. And though it's honorable to accept that mistakes make us better people, it would be foolish to not regret making them. Guilt and regret sparks flames within the heart to be persistent, feel remorse and become determined to change. Guilt and regret are bigger motivators to "learn your lesson" than dismissing a mistake as merely a "lesson." Human emotions such as these are often times seen as faults, but I"m beginning to believe they are nothing but hidden blessings. Use them to reign in past mistakes and push forth greater achievements. Use them as motivation to do better and become better.
Upon contemplation, I'm beginning to think that living life with no regrets would be to live a life without encouragement to grow.
As far as personifying time as the enemy that flies away, well, let me ask you--have you ever sat for a full minute, watched the second hand pass by and realize how long a minute truly is? It doesn't exactly feel like it's flying away. I think time flies before us because we're not looking up at the sky rather than blaming it on the speed it goes by. And so, in my opinion, the analogy is quite wrong. Perhaps if we sat up right with our eyes on what it needs to be, we wouldn't be surprised to find time passing before us.
And maybe if we didn't think time left, and maybe if we stopped thinking to not have regrets in our life, we would consider time to be something completely different. Time may in fact be our friend, not our enemy.
I've learned a big lesson this past year, one that only time could have taught me. I have many regrets, some I wish not to share. But, it was because of these regrets that my heart, mentality and life have changed for the better. These mistakes pushed me to rectify the guilt I felt. But yet, if it wasn't for time, I'm not quite sure I would be able to look back and realize that I learned it.
So, may time forever be my "fickle friend," for "enemy" is too harsh a word. And if I'm wrong--well, it's a regret that I'm sure will teach me a strong lesson.
No comments:
Post a Comment