The Passage of Time
A few years back, in my early 20s, I’d jotted down a couple lines in French, in the midst of a depressing night, which asserted my all-out anger at one of God’s creation: time.
I wish I had stumbled across those lines in my last bedroom clean-up, but that would’ve meant flicking throught a vast number of old notebook pages … something that my rhinite would not allow me to edeavour in.
Yet, at that gloomy night, by the tunes of The Doors’ A Feast of Friend, the last words the ink of my pen had written were rather impacting, given my slightly religous upbringing. It was something like this:
“Dieux est un criminel impitoyable, car son câdeau le plus précieux qu’il nous consacre, la vie, est harcelée par l’écoulement du temps et nous s’enfuit par nos doigts sans cesse. On peut rien attraper: ni joie, ni tristesse”.
“God is a merciless criminal, for his most precious gift bestowed upon us, life, is chased by the passage of time and escapes through our fingers incessantly. One cannot cling to anything: nor joy, nor sadness”.
Today, closer than ever to my early 30s, I’d like to expand those saddened lines.
I’ve leart that life indeed is an endless succession of lessons if you’re willing and able to face it with a generous pinch of salt and enthousiasm … and amongst all those lessons i’ve amassed so far, at the age of twenty-six, the one I cherish the most is this (which also happens to my addendun to my gloomy, early 20s text):
One cannot cling to anything: nor joy, nor sadness…
If this is so, then God cannot, but be a merciful creator, for the incessant passage of times is, in fact, another one of God’s precious gifts: renewal.
The incessant passage of times in the repetitive cycle of days, nights, weeks, months and years is becomes a stream of water whose continuous flow washes away all joy, but also all sadness.
There is no happiness that knows no end and no sadness that is everlasting.
