//The beauty of fucking time

The beauty of fucking time

“What is it then, time? If no-one will ask me, I will know; but if I wanted to explain it to someone asking, I will not”

BY: El Cancerbero

Image by PhotoMIX Company from Pexels

This phrase by Augustine of Hippo (Hippo, Africa that is) has been often used when someone tries to talk about time. Augustine knew there was a difference, the necessary quality to conceptualize something like time since, would there be time without this difference? And let’s not forget this philosopher went through several differences himself. First he was quite the “Augustine livin’ la vida loca”, a real enthusiast of drinking and sex outside of marriage, but then he got sanctified, after he converted to Christianity thanks to a supposed “divine sign”. Ok after this quick cultural note I have to say, time is really an irritation. We will never know for certain what the future might bring but only guess through what happened in the past. The present is diluted, it becomes past right as I’m trying to say it, and while the past leaves its mark in the present, it is not the present; It’s meaning has gone who knows where.

So you want to know what time is? Go watch some heads up science youtuber and try to figure it out. I know I will keep ranting about science and space-time here, I’m writing about what I feel in the heart, just like the Augustine that wrote his confessions. Since I confess that for me, the passage time is a fucking mess. Of course this will depend on who you ask, and when. Maybe I think that because I have to give a class I haven’t prepared in 40 minutes, precisely because I lost track of time. How relative can time be, so slow when you’re waiting yet so fast when you enjoy it. But in the end, the passage of time or the passage of difference won’t stop. Not for us, poor human mortals, merely a morsel for Chronos, yea, that guy who ate his children. As you can see not the most merciful one.

What would happen if time stopped? Everything would be uniform, static, another mess! Or maybe we wouldn’t’ even have time to think it, or even suffer it. My grandma used to say “this is what we got” and yes, thanks grandma, we got to make do with what we got, since the only real constant is change (good old Heraclitus’ phrase), everything comes to pass and, what mark would you want to leave behind? How would you like your last instant to be? The difference, we are allowed to live differently, perceive something no-one has seen moving forward and which we call time. But in the end everyone knows, like Augustine, that something is ‘eating’ us. So use your time better. Stop wasting your time. And also, thank anyone that has given you some of their time. Thank you.