Grant Me the Serenity

We all have memories that are special to us.  Sometimes we wish that we could crawl back into these memories and somehow live inside them all over again, not to change things, but just to be there again, to feel the way the air felt different then, to look into the eyes of someone who has long since slipped away, to really savor and appreciate those moments in a way that was impossible the first time around when we had no idea how fragile and transient they were.  But the wave of time pushes us farther and father away from these memories.  We struggle against the sweep of the wave, straining to reach back and grab a hold of these things.  But the wave says, "No.  We have to keep going."

We've all had our share of regrets.  We turned right when we should have turned left.  We gave in to temptations that we knew we should have resisted, and we eventually had to face the consequences.  We acted on what we knew then, instead of what we know now.  We let opportunities slip through our hands, thinking that another one would be right around the corner.  We've all had moments when we finally realized it was too late to fix a mistake, and we clinched our fists and cursed our inability to undo our own stupidity.  We've all held something priceless in our hands, and we've stumbled and faltered, and before we even knew what had happened, we watched the thing shatter on the ground.  These shattered pieces are the wave of time.  One moment the thing is whole, and in the next it's laying there, broken forever.

But it's not only our own regrets.  We watch as the whole world moves and changes, evolving and transforming beyond our control.  We watch our old elementary school being torn to the ground.  We watch them build a shopping center in it's place.  We watch as stars fade out and things rust and rot away.  We carve our names into a tree, as though preserving it in stone, only to see that same tree chopped down and cut into firewood and then burned away.  We see the people around us passing one by one.  The wave keeps advancing, carry some forward, and leaving some behind.

But the wave sweeps on, and eventually we all succumb to the great equalizer.  Our bodies age and whither, until they're finally broken by the wave, scattered in pieces or laid in the ground.  New life is born in our place, and it grows and changes and undergoes the same processes along the crest of the wave.  Even the sun itself will die out and the galaxies will collide, and all the intricate traces that we've made in the sand will be smoothed out and erased by the relentlessess, unstoppable sweep of the wave.  But another star will be born in it's place, and again the process will go on, on a larger scale, until even all the stars and galaxies themselves are no more.  Eventually the wave will wash the entire slate clean and there will be nothing but darkness and emptiness and vast silence.  Then the universe will collapse in on itself, and maybe the result will be another Big Bang, and rebirth will happen once again on the largest scale of all.  And the wave will press on.

I know that time travel isn't a subject for everyone.  I knew that going into this.  Some people are fascinated by it's puzzles and possibilities, while others see nothing but confusing nonsense.  Nevertheless, I think time itself is something that we all care about.  It is one of the fundamental aspects of our existence.  In some form or another, it is a dimension of nearly every thought we have.  We think of it thousands of times a day, even now as you think of how many times you think of time.  It can seem cruel and relentless.  It can seem like a road of opportunities, waiting ahead.  Perhaps the true power over time comes not in looking for ways to manipulate it or alter its course, but to accept it as it moves us along to the next thing that's just about to happen...now.

(This posts is also available in extra cheesy version and chaos flavor and full-blown neurosis.)