About Time

About Time

Time is a funny thing. People often say:"The time is not right." or "I meet him at the right time and right place."

So, what is time?

Time is invisible, and appears to exist independently from this world but yet it extends its power into every corner of our everyday life. Its invisibility cruelly tests our patience. Its short existence creates regret. But it also unselfishly shows you the light When the Time Is Right.

Everyone knows that we can't go back in time, nor forward. We can only live in NOW time. What if we can go back in time like what depicted in the movie: About Time? We go back to a particular moment to fix things that were not right and only realise that you have lost the other thing or missed a very important person in the future time?

This can be explained in a well-known cross-road scenario. You are standing at a cross-road. The choices are going left or right. You choose left without thinking, and then minutes later, a truck near the right side of the intersection slides off the road and overturns on one side onto the footpath. You luckily escape the injury because you choose to turn left.

I quite like this scenario, minus the accident bit in the example above. I often think my life in this way whenever I regret on something, I did bad. Really, there is nothing bad about what you have chosen. However, there will be a consequence for every choice you make, but we shouldn't look at it as the end. Any consequence leads to another choice making: learn to take the consequence and make it right the next time, or just give up completely. I won't say:" go for the first option, i.e. confront the problem all the time." It sometimes doesn't work that way. Sometimes, it's better to choose the latter option, i.e. let it go.

When you hear people say: " The time is just not right". It's probably true. At that moment, there are enough right conditions to guide you to make a certain decision. I once regretted I shouldn't have chosen to study something that don't give me anything in return. It costed me time and money. But when I think about it. I couldn't have chosen the others because "At that time, I didn't process any quality to study the thing that appears to be good to my present time." This is the funny side about time. You only realise the consequence sometime later to make you regret on your past choice.

But there is one uncontrollable factor in this time-consequence equation, i.e. who are you going to meet? I believe, this is done purely by destiny. If there's a god above, and THE person or THE opportunity you are going to meet or have are pre-planned.

Time also has it wonderful side. Its ocean-like capacity and water-like resolvability. A bad relationship or friendship you had years ago that once drove you mad don't seem to matter anymore. Long lost acquaintance suddenly walks in the same shop as you are and a lost relationship is re-built again.

We should reflect on ourselves once in a while. You will be surprised to see what you once dreamed and yet still haven't achieved, and what a naive and un-earthy person you once were. When you realise all of these, you can choose again: achieve the unfinished dream, becoming a better, wiser person or do nothing.

You see, all the time does is to gradually build up the effect through its magic space. Only until one point, that the effect is consequential enough for you to realise. I think someone would call it the transformation from quantity to quality. Yes, I totally agree that this principle applies to our lives, too.

What one greatest thing that time makes us suffer is to make us wait indefinitely in the dark. You don't know when is the end and when to exit. I recently started growing two pot flowers. On the seed packaging, it advises that the seeds usually take 12-14 days to sprout. But only three days after planting the seeds, I was surprised to see a tiny green sprout start appearing from underneath the soil. It's tiny, but its fresh green colour had excited me already.

I wish our life is like this. I wish I'd know what to expect and how long to expect a result. But, unfortunately, we can't. What we can do is to cherish what we have at this moment of our lives.

There isn't a life path that you choose is a good path or a bad one. It's relative and it's judged through comparison. Nothing in this world is definite because the time will change things. But when a turning point is waiting for you to choose. Try not to miss it and choose it well.

P.S. I am a true believer of a parallel universe or multi-verse. It says, at the same moment you choose to turn left at that intersection, there's another exact same copy of you choose to turn right in another world somewhere far far away. If you ever regret on something, you can imagine that another copy of you have nothing to regret at all.