My Dialogue with Time

                                                         My Dialogue with Time

Dennis Miller:

 “What is the biggest complaint? It is ironic that in our culture, everyone’s biggest complaint is about not having enough time, yet nothing terrifies us more than the thought of eternity.”

I came across this quote and sure enough it is a quote for all times. It is true that we all know we are unequal to match the speed of time. Time is nimble footed and flees faster than all of us and we can never catch up with it. All of us often question the wisdom and logic of 24 hours in a day and wish there were 25 if not more to a day. But at no time anyone bestows a thought as to what s/he would do in that extra hour or for that matter whether such a bonus will ever stop us from complaining about time and its ruthless speed that we humans cannot race against. PM seems to echo Time when he says “ na baithunga, na baithne dunga” (Neither will I rest nor will let you). Time does not rest; it is on the move. He has started his race not for 2019 but for beyond 2024 to be the PM till 2029 +++. Even the slow snail paced  Congress gave up the bullock cart and embraced bicycle but failed to catch up with the PM who was, in athletic terms citius, altius, fortius -faster, higher and  stronger (literally standing  atop of the car, higher than the bicycle).  However much we grumble about shortness of time, we make continuous effort to catch up with it, pin it down and triumph over it. But when we pin down time, it is not time that wriggles out, but only we let it go out of sheer inability to cope with timelessness. We rather hang on to time, because time stifled emerges as a Frankenstein’s monster and destroys us with sheer boredom and ennui.  Yet another paradox is the way we celebrate every birthday including that of the puppy and the kitten at home as a sign of forward thrust by a year. We deem it a happy day as though  it marks a year’s progress through life while actually it marks one year less from one’s allotted quota of years. Life’s upward curve in terms of years is simply a downward curve, a regression back into the unfathomable unknown state we had emerged from. Time moves forward and we recede backward. No wonder deep in our mind we are scared of time and its power to throw us into the timeless eternity of birth-death cycle.

Better to move with time than sit and stare at timeless eternity. To hide our inability to match time step by step, we complain that for the work we have to do, we are woefully short on time. Is there anyone who, when asked how do you spend time, will honestly say “I do nothing”.   Whenever I ask my US based relatives what they plan to do on a weekend, they always say:  “Oh! Don’t ask. Weekends are busier than weekdays. We have so much to do that there will be no time even to breathe…cleaning, dusting, washing, washing one’s hair, washing the car(s), cooking meals for a week, refrigerating them, shopping… they reel off without pausing for breath. Those who have not read Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett can glance through the dialogues quoted below to understand how we find it difficult to pass the time and how we concoct new games and devices to while away the time  as we are frightened of doing nothing while time passes by. Vladimir and Estragon are two tramps who like any one of constantly wait expecting something to happen, someone to come, and invent some way to pass the time:

Vladimir: Now what did we do yesterday evening?

ESTRAGON:

Do?

VLADIMIR:

Try and remember.

ESTRAGON:

Do . . . I suppose we blathered.

VLADIMIR:

(controlling himself). About what?

ESTRAGON:

Oh . . . this and that I suppose, nothing in particular. (With assurance.) Yes, now I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing in particular. That's been going on now for half a century

_

(a little later),

Tell me what to do.

VLADIMIR:

There's nothing to do.

VLADIMIR:

Will you not play?    (invent a strategy of play-acting)

ESTRAGON:

Play at what?

VLADIMIR:

We could play at Pozzo and Lucky. ( a cruel master and his dumb slave)

ESTRAGON:

Never heard of it.

VLADIMIR:

I'll do Lucky, you do Pozzo. (He imitates Lucky sagging under the weight of his baggage. Estragon looks at him with stupefaction.) Go on.

ESTRAGON:

What am I to do?

VLADIMIR:

Curse me!

ESTRAGON:

(after reflection). Naughty!

VLADIMIR:

Stronger!

ESTRAGON:

Gonococcus! Spirochete!

Vladimir sways back and forth, doubled in two.

VLADIMIR:

Tell me to think.

ESTRAGON:

What?

VLADIMIR:

Say, Think, pig!

ESTRAGON:

Think, pig!

Silence.

VLADIMIR:

I can't.

ESTRAGON:

That's enough of that.

VLADIMIR:

Tell me to dance.

ESTRAGON:

I'm going.

VLADIMIR:

Dance, hog! (He writhes. Exit Estragon left, precipitately.) I can't! (He looks up, misses Estragon.) Gogo! (He moves wildly about the stage. Enter Estragon left, panting. He hastens towards Vladimir, falls into his arms.) There you are again at last!

ESTRAGON:

I'm accursed!

Vladimir:

             Moron!

ESTRAGON:

That's the idea, let's abuse each other.  ( another way to pastime- to abuse each other)

They turn, move apart, turn again and face each other.

VLADIMIR:

Moron!

ESTRAGON:

Vermin!

VLADIMIR:

Abortion!

ESTRAGON:

Morpion!

VLADIMIR:

Sewer-rat!

ESTRAGON:

Curate!

VLADIMIR:

Cretin!

ESTRAGON:

(with finality). Crritic!

VLADIMIR:

Oh!

He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.

ESTRAGON:

Now let's make it up.

VLADIMIR:

Gogo!

ESTRAGON:

Didi!

VLADIMIR:

Your hand!

ESTRAGON: They separate. Silence.

VLADIMIR:

How time flies when one has fun!

Silence.

ESTRAGON:

What do we do now?   (then make peace)

VLADIMIR:

While waiting.

ESTRAGON:

While waiting.

Silence.

VLADIMIR:

We could do our exercises.  ( one more idea to while away the time :exercising,or what we call gymming)

ESTRAGON:

Our movements.

VLADIMIR:

Our elevations.

ESTRAGON:

Our relaxations.

VLADIMIR:

Our elongations.

ESTRAGON:

Our relaxations.

VLADIMIR:

To warm us up.

ESTRAGON:

To calm us down.

VLADIMIR:

Off we go.

Vladimir hops from one foot to the other. Estragon imitates him.

ESTRAGON:

(stopping). That's enough. I'm tired.

VLADIMIR:

(stopping). We're not in form. What about a little deep breathing?

ESTRAGON:

I'm tired breathing.

Take it!

VLADIMIR:

Come to my arms!

ESTRAGON:

Yours arms?

VLADIMIR:

My breast!

ESTRAGON:

Off we go!

They embrace.

This is an exhaustive quote only to underline that we invent occupations for ourselves such as gymming, facebooking, twittering, selfie snapping, hanging outside a mall or a café or a club, socializing without involvement – all the trappings of modern  man to pass time. And yet we complain that we do not have enough time – but  to do what is a question we dare not ask ourselves.

Is it a modern phenomenon or has this been the case with men and women since their fall from Paradise? According to the Old Testament, Adam and Eve lived happily in Paradise doing nothing- not even making love. The moment they did so, they fell from Paradise and like the fruit of apple hanging from the paradisiacal bough, time started hanging upon them. That is God’s masterstroke- for disobedience.  He thundered: “ You plucked the forbidden hanging fruit and you are punished. Now you have time hanging on you and you dare not tug at time. You lost eternity in Paradise, you be scared of eternity on earth”.

Thus banished and pushed down, we are now compelled to invent activities to pass time. We do it but what is ironical is we want more time because we do not want time to end. This is a given truth of existence and the question is how to confront the fleeting time that makes a mockery of all our actions? When I retired, my friends told me how they envied me as I would have the luxury of time to do all I could not do during my four long decades in service. They expected me to catch up with my reading,  sit, contemplate Buddha-like, and do whatever I wished to do (they knew and I knew it was all one  big fat lie as none of us ever have a clear idea of what to do other than the routine  humdrum work). But reality sunk in within two days of my sitting idle at home with nothing to do, nothing to be done, nothing to inspire and yet the enormous desire to do something without knowing what that something was. From daybreak to duskbreak, there was nothing that I could do which I had not done all along. It is not easy to write or easy even to read as though like manna falling from heaven, retirement opens up the floodgates of creativity. And then who will be my reader? For whom do I write? What shall be my focus?  Again the question props up - what to read, to what purpose my reading is to be directed, what to do after finishing my reading… It dawned on me sooner than later I would do nothing and like a bad workman complain about bad tools and lament every evening that one more day had been wasted. No, I resolved,  I must seize the opportunity to do something different and the result has been the self indulgence in words. This is the only thing I know – how to spin words -after having been in the teaching profession for almost four and a half decades.  I had used words and words and it is thus easy for me to retreat into words. I must devote at least a couple of hours to enjoy this luxury without the constraint of time to do other things. It is a kind of discipline I have to cultivate as it ensures self discipline that will give me a semblance of doing something. The importance is not so much on what I write, but on the discipline that I have to follow to introduce some degree of order in my   existence, that more often than not is disorderly and unpredictable.

    So now  I write not for others, I write not to be hailed a Nobel laureate, I write not for applause ,I write not to influence people and persuade them to my point of view, but I write for myself, to give myself a sense of being alive, to keep my mind oiled and keep it from becoming rusty and vacant, to guard myself from feeling  a sense of alienation from the rest of the world, to protect myself from self mockery and self inflicted flagellation of wasting my time and above all to give myself the meaning I exist. This is the way for all of us -men and women- to cope with time through self discipline and practice of that which we are good at. We have to accept the relentless march of time and our powerlessness to stop it. We have to be aware that all that we do dies after us and therefore be mindful of what we do in our lifetime- what  Shakespeare said in Julius Ceasar: The evil that men do lives after them;

                                   The good is oft interred with their bones;

   

    This is also a means of passing time but here there is no scope for complaint about not having enough time nor fear of timeless eternity. At best I may be accused of indulging in creative falsehood but that need not be a source of anxiety as its reach is limited and therefore its influence, if any. If time and tide wait for no man, I( representing all of humanity) do not also wait for time and be  threatened with  timelessness.