"Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings."

[jaqlada]

A song referance, I heard it today and it sparked a topic in my mind, so I'm here now to share my view.

"Time is a valuable thing, watch it fly by as the pendulum swings." - Linkin Park, In the End.

Time is a valuable thing, is it not? It seems it's the basis of our existence. Time is the foundation that society is built on, is it not? Time is the variable in which we determine experience. Wisdom and knowledge is said to come with time. Your employer will base your pay off the time that you spend. Hourly wages, salary, whether monthly or quarterly, etc...

Time, to me that is, is the peripheral of my existence. Time is the only limitation I truly have. I'm not experienced if I haven't spent the time. I'm not capable of showing my experience, I cannot use my actions to prove my set of skills. Instead I must prove that I've spent the time.

Without time, what do we have? If wisdom comes in time, what is wisdom without time? What is knowledge without time? What is experience without time? Without time, these things are power. Power that is represented through actions, through language, through us. The skills we build in life, and the experience we gain is so measured by time that we cannot truly unlock our potential.

I believe that time, and the limitations it comes with, are what sets the boundaries for us that inhibits our ability to be everything that we can be. Our lives are measured in time, and a short time it is. A short time by all means if measured by the clock, yes? The only thing time has taught me is fear. Fear of the unknown following my existence that's shortly ticking down by means of a clock.

I will make use of my time here. I will make a change, even if only a small one. I will live.
Tick.
Tock.

[Redbeck]

Jaglada Good Evening, so remiss of me, I seem to have overlooked your well crafted, more than valuable but rapidly ageing observations on the subject of time, you are of course completely correct time flows like lifeblood, and the supporting evidence is widespread and irrefutable, certainly within the arts community. As an example, the number of poets and playwrights who have embraced the momentous influence of time in their work, resides in the thousands, the more elderly among us indeed mourn its passage with increasingly intense emotions!

I have therefore sifted through some favourites on the subject and dropped them in beneath:-

Time Is by Henry Van Dyke
Time is
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too Short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love,
Time is not.

Time XXI by Khalil Gibran
And an astronomer said, "Master, what of Time?"
And he answered:
You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not form love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?

But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

Sonnet 12: When I do count the clock that tells the time by William Shakespeare
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Was There A Time by Dylan Thomas
Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.

To Ireland In The Coming Times by William Butler Yeats
Know, that I would accounted be
True brother of a company
That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong,
Ballad and story, rann and song;
Nor be I any less of them,
Because the red-rose-bordered hem
Of her, whose history began
Before God made the angelic clan,
Trails all about the written page.
When Time began to rant and rage
The measure of her flying feet
Made Ireland's heart hegin to beat;
And Time bade all his candles flare
To light a measure here and there;
And may the thoughts of Ireland brood
Upon a measured guietude.
Nor may I less be counted one
With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,
Because, to him who ponders well,
My rhymes more than their rhyming tell
Of things discovered in the deep,
Where only body's laid asleep.
For the elemental creatures go
About my table to and fro,
That hurry from unmeasured mind
To rant and rage in flood and wind,
Yet he who treads in measured ways
May surely barter gaze for gaze.
Man ever journeys on with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.
Ah, faerics, dancing under the moon,
A Druid land, a Druid tune.!
While still I may, I write for you
The love I lived, the dream I knew.
From our birthday, until we die,
Is but the winking of an eye;
And we, our singing and our love,
What measurer Time has lit above,
And all benighted things that go
About my table to and fro,
Are passing on to where may be,
In truth's consuming ecstasy,
No place for love and dream at all;
For God goes by with white footfall.
I cast my heart into my rhymes,
That you, in the dim coming times,
May know how my heart went with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.