Mark Twain once said, ‘The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.’ But does anyone live fully? It is simply so that we are fated to grasp the value of our lives only when they are nearly gone. But why is it that only when you are close to death, only when finally fully conscious of the fact the paradigm you have existed in for as long as you know is about to dissipate into nothingness, only then that you realise the true value of the gift you have been given? Once the shock of the initial epiphany subsides your mind takes it upon itself to remind you of all the time you once had and wasted, taunting you as though it is not enough agony to see the clock tick the countdown to your end, oblivious to your pain and regret. This is cruelty on the part of nature is it not? Because one can never know the value of what they have until it is gone, that is the macabre beauty of the world. Or maybe one just never thought they would ever lose it.
There is always something on our minds. Time is constantly giving, generously doling out seconds, which grow into minutes, growing into hours to days to weeks to months to years, yet we are unaware of its passing. Seneca said the minds of the preoccupied, as if harnessed in a yoke, cannot turn round and look behind them. So our lives vanish into an abyss; and just as it is no use pouring any amount of liquid into a container without a bottom to catch and hold it, it does not matter how much time we are given if there is nowhere for it to settle; it escapes through the cracks and holes of the mind. We compromise our happiness in the present for a time of leisure in the future that may never come, and yet cannot abide living in our own skulls so vehemently that we scramble to fill what leisure time we do have between events, activities, or commitments with the equivalent of wasteful distraction and thought.
It had taken me my whole life to understand what Seneca realised centuries ago. For every minute I had spent angry, I had lost sixty seconds of happiness. For every hour I spent planning the future, I had lost sixty minutes of enjoying the present. For every day I had spent absorbed in memories of the past, I had lost twenty four hours of new experience. My mind had finally settled, but time had stopped pouring.
There is always something on our minds. Time is constantly giving, generously doling out seconds, which grow into minutes, growing into hours to days to weeks to months to years, yet we are unaware of its passing. Seneca said the minds of the preoccupied, as if harnessed in a yoke, cannot turn round and look behind them. So our lives vanish into an abyss; and just as it is no use pouring any amount of liquid into a container without a bottom to catch and hold it, it does not matter how much time we are given if there is nowhere for it to settle; it escapes through the cracks and holes of the mind. We compromise our happiness in the present for a time of leisure in the future that may never come, and yet cannot abide living in our own skulls so vehemently that we scramble to fill what leisure time we do have between events, activities, or commitments with the equivalent of wasteful distraction and thought.
It had taken me my whole life to understand what Seneca realised centuries ago. For every minute I had spent angry, I had lost sixty seconds of happiness. For every hour I spent planning the future, I had lost sixty minutes of enjoying the present. For every day I had spent absorbed in memories of the past, I had lost twenty four hours of new experience. My mind had finally settled, but time had stopped pouring.
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