What is the significance of time in a person’s life? Time, defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary is the “indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.” But what does the dictionary definition of time matter when we know it so well? We count the hours, days, weeks, maybe even years until we can do something. We count time, but can time really be measured with the use of a number?
We are caught counting the hour hands on the clock waiting until it is time to do what we have to do, but while we wait for that time to arrive, time has already passed us. Perhaps not the time that we were waiting for, but most definitely part of our existence has passed. We spend too much time wishing for a certain time to arrive that we let the time leading up to it pass without much regard. It is not time that will come to us. It is stagnant. Instead we are the ones approaching it, making the effort to reach it without realizing it.
In other instances, we might let opportunities pass because we think that time will bring the moment to us. However, as we may have noticed, time doesn’t do us any favors. If we want something we must strive for it. Create the moment that will become a part of time. Sometimes it is not about reaching a point in time, but the lapse from when we start to where we end and what we accomplish in that time.
From my point of view, the best thing we can do is to not count the hours until we can do something. The existence of time is merely a guide for us to find our path. Unless we keep focusing so intently on the time we think we know, we will continue to ignore its literal meaning. A meaning with which we see that it is not numbers that dictate our lives but sequences that we choose to reach and generate. We will choose what we do with the time we have.
Personally I have let too much time pass. Yes, I am probably only one-seventh of the way into my life, assuming that I live to be around 96 years of age. However, nobody guarantees that I’ll live for such a long time. For all I know I’m one-third of the way into my life span, and I don’t believe I’ve lived it to the best of my ability by taking risks and living without regrets. In our lives there will be occasions that will become part of our time. Other occasions will be missed because time won’t stop and without any remorse, it will also take away from us the things that could have been one more moment in our time. I came to the conclusion that time is important because more than giving us something to measure and coordinate arrangements, it is something that we’ll never be able to capture. It will always escape us before we know it. Even before we acknowledge it. So, because of this the only thing we can do while we still inevitably live in a perpetual cycle is to transmit what we feel to the things we value in life. If we live this way, time would never take away more than what we were willing to give in every moment.
Instead of catching up to society’s clock, why don’t we catch up to our personal clock. A clock that is accurate to our personal goals. Instead of putting things off for the time that seems right we should do them when the thought feels like something we are sure we want to do. The time will never be right but the action feels right. Therefore, we should take the opportunity whenever it arises. We never know when the unforeseeable end to our time will cause us to hit a definite pause to the plans that we had aspired to complete someday.
The significance of time in our lives is not to lay out a path, but to encapsulate the past memories, present actions, and future plans.