Time

 "Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived."

Jon Luc Picard, Captain/Retired Admiral Starfleet (Played Marvelously by Patrick Stewart)

When I was young, very young, the word Time had no meaning for me. It was the moment that I was in that was important. A day was an incomprehensible eternity. I could not fathom what that meant. It did not matter, to me anyway, that I had no concept of time.

After a bit, a few years I began to get a stumbling concept of time. It began when I started noticing that each day, while long, was not infinite. It had a beginning and an end.

And, after some more time, I began to distinguish hours, minutes, and seconds. My sense of time and it's meaning began to flesh out for me.

Later on in life, when I was fully integrated into the Human Conception of time, Fear entered into my life. And with the entering of fear I began to know time as an enemy.

It seemed to me as if Time was always squeezing me into corners. It seemed as if I was always rushing to catch up or waiting for things to happen. Never did I experience time and space matching or being in alignment.

So my relationship to time has never been healthy. It has always been adversarial. Like so many of my relationships in this life.

And then I began to learn about time itself. And I learned that Time is a Construct, created by Humans, to differentiate between Now, and Not Now. And we broke down Now and Not Now into three parts, Past, Present, and Future to explain things.

And yet, I know the only time that truly exists, that we ever experience, is Now. That is it. That is all we have. I cannot affect The Past. It is Not Now and I cannot do anything to effect it. I can try to influence The Future with no guarantees because it is also Not Now. And I can only have a possible influence on The Future by The Choices I make here in the present moment, in The Now. I can only hope that what I try to influence will actually occur the way I want however when that Future becomes Now.

So Now, the only real time that exists. All the rest is only our words, our creations, to try and delineate things in a way that we can understand.

And for things that are our own creations to help us understand we can sure get lost in them.

I am reminded of the opening episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. When Commander Sisko, played fantastically by Avery Brooks, he was really brilliant in this role, is in the wormhole and gets introduced to the being that the Bajorans call The Prophets. And they have a very different relationship with Time. And we keep seeing Sisko reliving the death of his wife. And they ask him, "Why do you live here"?

And he does not yet understand. He does not yet know that because he is emotionally attached to this moment, his grief and survivors guilt anchor him to this moment. He is trapped here because he cannot let go of this moment. He quite literally Lives There.

And then he finally understands and acknowledges that Yes, he does live there. And he begins to let go of all the emotion that chains him to that moment. And he learns to live in the Now of life.

And I too have had many moments of the past where I "Lived". I was chained to those moments by Hate, Anger, Pain, and Fear. And letting go of these things, when they are all I know and I have no idea what life will look like after that, can be very difficult. However, it is only difficult because I make it so. Once one truly accepts that this is what must be done, and walks thru the Fear surrounding doing it, it is really simple.

And if I can do that, then anyone can do that. I swear that this is true.

And then there is The Future. Another time that is not real. Yet we must look at it and Create it. And how do we do this? We make Choices in the Present moment that are shaped by the Plans that we make for the future that does not exist. And we keep doing this until the Future that we are trying to Create becomes the Present that we actually exist in.

And so often that Present that we have created is not like the way we had been envisioning it. Our Plans had "Failed. And we try again, with even more effort and determination. And again "Fail". And keep on cycling in this. And what is even worse, every once in a while we "Succeed" and get what we were aiming for. So we "Know" that we can achieve the Future that we want. And try even harder.

And that is my cycle. And what happens in that cycle is that I do not pay attention to my present and the present gets really unmanageable. I heard it said once, and believe it is true based on my experience, "When we try to manage the unmanageable, the manageable becomes unmanageable". And I have also heard it said, and believe that it really good advice, again based on my own experience, the the best thing to do is "Make the plans and do what you can, and then let go of the results".

And that is how one handles a time that does not exist, in this case, the future. By managing what I can manage, make the plans, and let go of the results. And possibly getting what the Future I was planning, or at least a version of it, and sometimes not.

We, as Human Beings, can get lost in a Past that we are Resentful of, and focused on a future we want that we are afraid of. And as a result we live in an unmanageable Present that we are angry at, or about. And that is not healthy at all. I know this based on my own life and experience.

So how do we stop that? How do we get into Living in the Present moment? Well, we Practice some different things.

When looking at our Past we replace Resentment at that past for Acceptance of that past. I have heard it said that in order to Accept ones past, one needs to Give Up wishing for a different past, give up trying to rewrite the past, and just Accept that this past happened exactly the way that it did. That does not mean liking the past, or approving of the past. It just means Accepting that this is the past that one has, and that no other past is possible.

When looking at the Future we need to replace the Fear, and there are a multitude of Fears possible when looking at the future, with Faith. Whatever that means for You. For me, it just means having Faith that I can have a decent future with my needs met. That all the good things that I see happen to all of you, is also Possible for Me.

And what that does is give me a Present, and that is, again, the only Time that is real for us, that I no longer need to be Angry about. Instead I can have Love for it. And all of you.

It is in the Present that all life happens. There is No Life in the Past or the Future. Only in this Moment right now. This is where our lives exist and no where else.

So please, accept this invitation to Live in the Present Moment. Or, as a friend always says, Be Where My Feet Are.

Our Lives will all be much better if we do.

Peace, Love, and Naked Squirrels to all 💖✌