The Clock is Ticking

The clock is ticking obviously, this is a predictable cry of one who is bewildered and regretful that there was not enough time to get through the situation. When our children leave home, we say it as if we had planned to appreciate and admire them one day, someday in the future when we would be less stressed, someday in the not too distant future when we would have more time to spend with them. In my opinion, there should have been more time to watch them grow and enjoy them as well as enjoy them.

As if to acknowledge that we had more to offer, as if it were unfair that we weren’t able to put that into action, as if we were waiting one day to go on and do what we were born to do and make a real contribution, we say it when our jobs are taken away from us as if acknowledging that we had more to offer. It was my expectation that there would be more time to demonstrate myself as an excellent candidate and make my mark. It is what we say when we are caught off guard when our lover leaves us as if we were blindsided and given no warning as if it is not our fault that the magic had left long before as if someday we would be a better partner.

If there were more time, I would have been able to express how much I love you to you. We say it as we die, as we let go of our last hold on reality, as the air slips from our lungs, the pain that was once so intense turns into an odd dullness, and finally to peace and light, as our last, failing grasp on the world is released by a more giant hand.

As if we had lived a life that was unfelt and remorseful, we would say to ourselves that we had always planned to live someday soon, as if we were caught by surprise at the fact that there is no more time to live and love, as if we had never realized the clock was ticking all along, as if we hadn’t known we would be called, as if we hadn’t realized it was time to act.

Did we not know all this before? I thought there would be more… Did we not know all this before? It beggars belief that we are so foolhardy as to miss the irony in all of this. Even though time is finite in an infinite universe, we have a finite amount of time to live in, and even if we cannot comprehend the order and reason for it all, the outcome is predictable—life will come to an end randomly, and too soon.

Perhaps brutishly or easily, but most likely with little fanfare or crescendo other than, hopefully, the love that has gathered around us, it will be taken away. When the time finally comes for a player to play one more hand of cards, why is it that so many people gasp and beg and plead for another hand of cards as if the Dealer would keep patience with a drifter who never actually played all the cards he already dealt them?

It would be easy for us to lament the decline we are about to suffer. It is possible to try to avert the day when death arrives and whispers to our ears that now is our destined moment when we ascend back to Love and we could try to prevent that day. The possibility of it happening could be denied. Despite all the chances we would receive to enjoy life while we can, with the loss of those we love, accidents, and randomness that we seem to hit from the sky when we least expect it, we could keep missing the hints we receive to enjoy life while we can.

Nevertheless, we don’t think about our mortality in any way as a matter of fact. Continuing to check our fancy watches and full agendas in a panic, we wonder where we are going to be. We somehow seem blinded and deaf to destiny waving its arms at us, screaming out at the moment, asking my friend, you are exactly where you need to be already, do you not see that? Instead of looking for something else, look around and see what you find. The whole thing is now here for you to see. You will have missed out on life if you don’t make it.