Time Retrospection

“I’ll wait until I can’t wait anymore.”

The days were filled with haste and urgency before this very moment where I am sitting snugly in my favorite side of the sofa, sipping my first cup of coffee and slowing down everything (shutting them, if you’ll allow me). Sometimes, we feel like we’re running out of time. Like the very existence of time per se puts an intangible bondage and limit to us all. That is true for many conventional senses; the very fabric of the universe is made of time and space. Every ounce of it speaks seconds. A liter begets hours. It is also true that time runs simultaneously in our veins like blood does. We are alive because of time. We are here because of time.

But which should really be master of which? Time over Man; Man over Time. If I were to be philosophical, I’d probably say, in reflex, that man should not be enslaved by time. That a human being is a living soul thus couldn’t be caged; a free spirit it is. But that doesn’t even make any concrete sense. It’s just abstract ideas that are yet to be proved true.  I’m not against philosophy or something, in fact I’m one of the many spirits of this world that are hoping for this to be true. That in reality, the ticking of the clock should not be of any nuisance at all.

Now let’s talk about aging. Obviously -no matter how many Vitamin E you would take- wrinkles, sagging skin, slowed-down metabolism & senile forgetfulness would meet your ends by its ends. This is all pre-orchestrated by time in a wanton attempt to break the hopes of immortality. She has succeeded (I used ‘she’ for time reminds me of my mom). Always keeping me at haste in almost everything; errands, dirty dishes, home works, name it. So she has (technically) been the one having my supreme obeisance. And I hate to admit this but yes, I was bounded by time due to the plain fact that I’m afraid to age. Well, who doesn’t anyway?

But that’s the very problem that needs to be solved. I guess the primary sense of rush is that we are afraid to age, and by ‘rushing’ everything, we could at least do all the things we want before we come meeting an age where we can do it no more. The world, as it was made, is so huge for a single viewing. That’s why people are so obsessed with speed. They want to experience them all and the only way they could do that is by moving fast.  A race against time, there is.

I too, have been repeatedly a contender in this race. In my seventh birthday, my first field trip across cities, my first kiss, my prom night, my first heartbreak, my circumcision, my mom’s risky pregnancy, and so on and so forth. In these moments, time has been so fast I had to run faster, and faster and faster just to be able to cope up with it. It is exasperating and thrilling in the same time; Equal parts joy and pain. But I am not aware of this all right in that very moment. All that was running in my mind in that flashing was to run. To survive that moment; to capture it even.

This is the other reason I came up with: The desire to capture every moment. But in order to do this, you need to be swift. Not like Taylor Swift, but swift-swift. Okay, excuse me for a failed attempt at a joke, but kidding aside, you really need to embody the very spirit of nitro if you really want to capture a moment. But come to think of it, every breath is a moment. If only we are that patient in waiting, in anticipating, then rushing would not be a choice. For every moment is a moment itself; It could be lazy afternoon with a cup of coffee, a late night grocery spree waiting in line for the cashier, an early shower in the middle of December. There’s no point in haste if we are only that well-conditioned to anticipate.

Come to think of it like this, you are entering a cafeteria and you are –for the entire world to know- hungry as a troll. You are expecting for a piece of chocolate mousse cake, mouth drooling excessively. You are anticipating for that cake. And even before you know there is a cake like that, you can already taste it. So finally, when you arrived at the stalls, you see one waiting for you.  There’s no urge not to speed up but just to smile with the mere thought that you are waiting for this all along. You had foreseen this.

I know that its shitty metaphor but that true (at least for me).  Expecting wouldn’t really hurt (at least if your love life isn’t concerned). But waiting is another problem that comes with time.

People hate to wait. Whether be it on a café or an enrolment line, a person would probably spit a couple of curses. Maybe because waiting slows down our ‘hurry’ even though time is continuously running at constant speed. Caring ultimately less if she’ll leave you. Because no matter how long we wait for time to come, we cannot change the fact that time would not wait for us in return. It’s harsh but we need to live with it.

Earlier, I told you that I’m snugly cocooning in my side of the sofa, letting the world run with seconds like it usually does. Do you want to know how I shut (though temporarily) my sense of hurry? I did that by pretending; pretending that we are invincible; that we are the center of our own universe. By that, I switch off my internal clock and just ‘be’ in the moment. We cannot really erase the truth about time being the all-powerful force against age, capturing and waiting but at least we can pretend.

To make-believe that truly our being is a free spirit, a bird with no cage such as the world or time; hoping that seconds are just one fragment to spice things up in our story. I don’t know if you’ll learn something from this just like how I learned so much from coffee. That no matter how bitter or sweet it could get, you’ll still put in upon your lips, never afraid to have a taste.

Now, I’ll just wait for epiphany to come. I’ll wait until I can’t wait anymore.