A Few Things Through my Eyes – Stolen Time

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Lost time is never found again. – Benjamin Franklin

Once again I’ve been robbed.  Hard to believe how often this happens in my life.  No, I’m not talking about my personal possessions.  I’m talking about my time.  It seems that the more time I try to find, the quicker it is stolen.  Who is at fault for this?  Is society to blame?  My friends or my family.. are they the culprits?  Is it really my own fault?  Even if it is my own fault, am I really to blame?  Really?

Because we have so much eye candy and mind candy, spending so much time trying to pay the rent, all of this conspires to keep us from thinking too hard or taking action from that. Our time is stolen. So much of our daily life is stolen.  Lydia Lunch

So here is the question.  Do I sit and mourn that lost time?  Do I waste more time chastising myself or going around apologizing for all of the things I have missed and lost in my hurry to do other things?  Do I cry because I have missed out on relationships while trying to find a relationship?  What have I lost and what is there to gain by trying to recoup it?

How can I know that while sifting through emails, perusing facebook and various blogs or laughing at crazy little ridiculous photos, sayings or jokes that my time might be better spent studying my current subject or even calling my family and wishing them well?

My idea of something funny

My idea of something funny

How can I possibly be expected to rationalize that spending time with one friend will probably severely limit the time I can spend with another.  If I take one job and disregard a different opportunity will I be happy at that one job or spend forever regretting that decision and pining over how my life could have been?  Should I even stop and consider these things? If I did, what would I chose to do? How much time would I waste in that insane endeavor?

And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?  – Tillie Olsen

Is one food going to be better for me than another?  Is one word or one sentence going to be more important than another?  How do I know that the words I am learning to use right now in my class are going to help me later on?  Should I spend more time trying to figure out how I could have been more sensitive in a situation or how I should have been more direct?  How will stopping to look at a random person creating their own moment in time or piece of art change my life?  Will I regret not eating more desserts and drinking more wine?  Will not taking the time to stop, look and listen cause me to lose my inspiration, my momentum or place in a line?  If I do or don’t stop will it even matter?  Will I learn more and be more and have more if I go left instead of right? Or wait.. maybe I did go left when I should have gone right?  I should have stopped .. or should I have kept going?

New York
New York
New York
New York

I wish I could tell you that there was an answer to this question or even a point to me writing this.  Maybe I’m just currently wasting your time.  Or YOU are wasting your time by reading what I have written.  Before you start thinking I’m feeling sad about my life or where I am today I want to be very clear on this.  My own opinion is that nothing you do is truly wasted time as long as you can recognize what you need to be changing to make yourself happy and as long as you can keep moving ahead.  I have recently been surrounded by some very sad, angry and confused individuals who do nothing but regret their actions.  They regret their lost youth and the time that has been lost doing whatever it is they were doing.  It’s been a challenge for me when I hear their stories.  When I look at them I see a person who is still young, still able to make changes and yet they describe themselves in a way that makes me imagine that in their minds this is what they are seeing:

I have very, very few regrets about the things I have done or the places I have gone and even if some of my decisions were bad ones, AND I’m positive that many probably were, I would not be here now doing the things I am doing if I had done anything differently.  Yes, I have had to go back and start over during some very challenging portions of my life.  I have had to change my mind and my attitude on several occasions in order to keep moving ahead and growing and understanding what exactly it was I was supposed to be doing. In my opinion, it is NEVER too late to learn a new attitude or a new trade or even just how to live with yourself.   I’m told I’m a little unrealistic when I say that I feel that everyone can do the same thing.  I truly believe that anyone can start over and that best time to do that is..NOW!!!

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.  – Steve Jobs

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it. – W. C. Fields

In Time (2011) Sci-Fi

  Henry Hamilton: How old are you? In real time?

  Will Salas: 28.

  Henry Hamilton: I’m 105.

  Will Salas: Good for you. You won’t see 106, you have too many more nights like tonight.

  Henry Hamilton: You are right. But the day comes when you’ve had enough. Your mind can be spent, even if your body’s not. We want to die. We need to.

  Will Salas: That’s your problem? You’ve been alive too long? You ever known anyone who’s died?

  Henry Hamilton: For a few to be immortal, many must die.

  Will Salas: What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  Henry Hamilton: You really don’t know, do you? Everyone can’t live forever. Where would we put them? Why do you think there are time zones? Why do you think taxes and prices go up the same day in the ghetto? The cost of living keeps rising to make sure people keep dying. How else could there be men with a million years while most live day to day? But the truth is… there’s more than enough. No one has to die before their time. If you had as much time as I have on that clock, what would you do with it?

  Will Salas: I’d stop watching it. I can tell you one thing. If I had all that time, I sure as hell wouldn’t waste it.

The Illusion of Time (Nova/Youtube)

Time. We waste it, save it, kill it, make it. The world runs on it. Yet ask physicists what time actually is, and the answer might shock you: They have no idea. Even more surprising, the deep sense we have of time passing from present to past may be nothing more than an illusion. How can our understanding of something so familiar be so wrong? In search of answers, Brian Greene takes us on the ultimate time-traveling adventure, hurtling 50 years into the future before stepping into a wormhole to travel back to the past. Along the way, he will reveal a new way of thinking about time in which moments past, present, and future—from the reign of T. rex to the birth of your great-great-grandchildren—exist all at once. This journey will bring us all the way back to the Big Bang, where physicists think the ultimate secrets of time may be hidden. You’ll never look at your wristwatch the same way again.

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11 thoughts on “A Few Things Through my Eyes – Stolen Time”

  3. i feel you. instead of mussing over wasted chances, why not focus on the good things, right? i like how you write! and wow, i am humbled in one way or another, my blogpost has sorta inspired you. thanks! God bless you 🙂

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  4. Thanks for checking out my blog! Yours looks great, Following now =)

    I like this quote from Henry D. Thoreau: “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity…” =)

    –Love and Liberation–

    Jan @ TheRewildWest

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  5. Thanks for stopping by my blog…I’m now enjoying reading some of your posts! Like this one, and I concur with focussing on the good stuff. Yes, I do have a few regrets, but I don’t dwell on them. I (mis)quote TS Eliot “what might have been and what has been all point to the same end That which is present”…etc,etc. 🙂

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