Times Of Swaziland: TIME WHISPERS THAT WE ARE STRANGERS HERE

TIME WHISPERS THAT WE ARE STRANGERS HERE
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Editor on 15/03/2021 14:43:00


Sir,
Time is constant and regular, and the fact that a minute will always be a minute
for everyone everywhere on earth doesn’t mean that is the same everywhere in
the universe. But what do we mean with concepts such as the ‘beginning of
time’ and the ‘end of time’? Maybe it is the beginning and end of things
in their present form. With the infinite mind, it would appear everything exists
in the here and eternal now. Time is only measured by mankind. It is us who want
to divide time in terms of a month, year, week, and a day.
Divide
We divide the years into a new year and an old year. Whereas in nature
everything just is. Time itself knows no segmentation into a particular
celebration. All this exists in our minds. This is not based on nature but our
measurement. As relating time, we continuously hear talk such as; I shall be
back, ‘now;’ I will do it, ‘now;’ He has just left, ‘now.’ From
these statements, what do we mean by ‘now’? Before we do what we set to do
‘now,’ the now is already the past. Seemingly ‘now’ is difficult to
measure, and it’s gone immediately we refer to it, though at the same time the
present is now. The other issue on time and us is found in these words: “This
year was a very bad year for me.” Isn’t it that the issue of a year being
bad exists only in the mind not in nature, and that there is nothing bad about a
year?
Deny
This is not to deny that we do have misfortune happening in our lives. The year
itself, as our measurement of time, knows nothing about badness or goodness –
it is only our categorisation that makes us particularise a year as bad or good.
There’s no autocrat somewhere in the universe that makes a year bad for an
individual or an entity; life just happens. Mostly, our misfortunes or fortunes
are based on our choices, hence the saying: “What you sow, you reap.” Henry
B Eyring once said; “Time passes at a fixed rate, we cannot store it. We can
decide what we want to do with it or not do with it.” In a sense, it has been
said, we can’t ‘save’ time like we can save water that would otherwise run
away; we can make time serve as water that runs into a reservoir.
Inherit
And in the words of Brigham Young: “The property which we inherit from God is
our time, and the power to choose in the disposition of same. This is the real
capital that is bequeathed unto us by God; all the rest is what He may be
pleased to add unto us.” Time is the real valuable asset for us and all that
we do, we do within, not without time on this planet. But, as Neal A. Maxwell
says: “Time is clearly not our natural dimension. Thus it is that we are never
really at home in time. Whereas a bird is at home in the air, we are clearly not
at home in time because we belong to eternity. Time whispers to us that we are
strangers here. If time were natural to us, why is it that we have so many
clocks and wear wristwatches?” In the eternities these will be irrelevant and
obsolete.