A Timely Matter

"When man was exiled from that eternity in which all times were one, he entered chronometric time and became a prisoner of the clock and the calendar. As soon as time was divided up into yesterday, today, and tomorrow, into hours, minutes and seconds, man ceased to be one with time, ceased to coincide with the flow of reality. When one says, "at this moment," the moment has already passed. These spatial measurements of time separate man from reality." 

The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz, 209

I have often thought about this very concept. Time is a funny thing. We love it and we hate it. When we are at Disneyland, playing our favorite sport, or with someone we love, we wish time would just stick around. It would be wonderful to be able to just stop it. However, when we are at work, in that boring class, or having having an awkward conversation, we plead for time to hurry. Shakespeare put it perfectly:


“Time is very slow for those who wait
Very fast for those who are scared
Very long for those who lament 
Very short for those who celebrate
But for those who love time is eternal”

I imagine the timeless society that Adam and Eve lived in. Although it may seem like it might have been lonely and boring, I believe it was probably very liberating and comfortable. No aging, no homework, no job, and virtually, no stress. They were not "prisoners of time." They were "one with time" and "coincided with the flow of reality." Paz references a life with no time, somewhere out there. He seems to infer the superiority of that mysterious world.

The author says much more about the topic, but the message I took away from the text was the urgency of life. Paz compares life to a race against time, and he is right. Poets have rhymed, artists and authors have written, and many greats have emphasized living in the present. If we do not do that, we have nothing. We will have lost another today which will turn into one more wasted yesterday.