bound by yet another human construct? or freed?

It's easy to become distracted and, once ensnared, hard to break away. I heard it articulated last night thusly: Sin is like a comfortable bed: easy to get into but hard to get out of. I'm not equating distraction with sin-- only comparing.

I find myself distracted. I wasn't the moment I walked in this morning; there was work to do and a firm deadline of 10:30am. So I knuckled down and got it done. Ahead of schedule.

But now I find myself distracted... I'm here, aren't I? That's right. I'm here wasting time when there are 3 other looming deadlines on the desk as I speak. But, since I'm already here, let's consider my deadlines.

Between each momentary "now" and each of my multiple deadlines is an ever shrinking value called time. For those of you who followed Farscape and enjoyed the finale, The Peacekeeper Wars, a bit of dialog...

Einstein:      Time...
Crichton:      ...Flies
Einstein:      Time...
Crichton:      ...Bandits
Einstein:      Time...
Crichton:      ...Wounds all heels
Einstein:      Time...
Crichton:      ...Rosemary and
Einstein:      Time...
Crichton:      ...Time ends.

The point being? Time ends. Deadlines come and nothing you do can halt its approach. Like that last line from 'Dust in the Wind'... "And all your money won't another minute buy..."

While I'm wasting time, my deadlines cometh. Welcome or not, they approach. The sands slip through the hourglass.

Another movie quote: from The Matrix...

"Do you hear that Mister Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability."

So there you have it. Each moment I spend here, distracted from those things that must get done, is lost. This means I will have to work doubly hard to get my tasks done, which makes me a slave to time. We all are. Our lives are ordered by time.

But time is a construct, right? A human construct? Can't we just tell time to go away? That we refuse to play its game a moment longer? Ahhh! Not a moment longer? Even our tongues speak the truth of our serfdom to the rule of time-- a construct no longer but, as Agent Smith declares, an inevitability. We are born, live our lives-- for the most part --obliviously or semi-aware of the cost of our daily and momentary choices. But there is hope, albeit emaciated...

From Fyodor Dostoevsky's, The Possessed...

"You've started believing in the future eternal life?"

"No, not future eternal, but here eternal. There are moments, you reach moments, and time suddenly stops, and will be eternal."

"You hope to reach such a moment?"

"Yes."

"It's hardly possible in our time," Nikolai Vsevolodovich responded, also without any irony, slowly and as if thoughtfully. "In the Apocalypse the angel swears that time will be no more."

"I know. It's quite correct there; clear and precise. When all mankind attains happiness, time will be no more, because there's no need. A very correct thought."

"And where are they going to hide it?"

"Nowhere. Time isn't an object, it's an idea. It will die out in the mind."

--- Kirillov to Stavrogin

It will die out in the mind.... so very true! But, in the mean time, the sands slip through the glass, moments die; perhaps consumed by voracious langoliers.

Stavrogin hopes to reach a moment where time suddenly stops. I wish to hope for the same. Perhaps even turn the hands back a decade or two. But I'd settle for keeping the hands at 11:14am on this day of April 29, 2010 for a week or two... allow myself some breathing room, and time to catch up.

But time is an enemy to everyone. Because we know what it has in it's nasty pocketses.

Ha! To think some one could actually have a door in its pocket.

Who would we call such a one but Death?