The clicking clock

 

September 10, 1987

 

            There’s always a time limit, a clicking clock around which we live our lives.

            We’re not talking about time on the meter which ticks as I write, but also the biological one which tells us that we won’t be here long.

            This may explain the made rush of people currently whizzing my.

            Time is too short to waste on living. We all feel the pressure of it, and of course, there are other clocks, too, such as the ones we create for ourselves that say we must have this or that by a certain time in our lives, a house or car or mate or position. For while I have lived with the idea of having a novel published by the age of 30, this changed to 31, 32, 33 and so on as my age increased.

            Lately, I hav3e come to accept my fate and settle for getting so much done per day and hope that in the end it produces a work of art.

Perhaps, time itself is a work of art in which the artist or the hand of God shaped and reshapes this one great wonder called life. The struggle comes when we think too much about not finishing what we do or ending this existence in terms other than what we see as success.

As time begins to run out, we reevaluate our dreams and tone them down to what we see as more possible. Sometimes this is less a product of time and more a debate over values. Do we want one form of success over another? This is most prevalent in young adults who discover at an appropriate age the difference between glory and wealth, and to noble idea which seemed so glorious during their tees evolve into something least likely to achieve the material means that these young people also envision.

It takes risk to give up material wealth for the prospect of art – one gambles on the talent which may or many not produce intended glory.

Many make the choice, only to change their minds later as time begins to eat away at their future and the settling for less takes over and we get the concept of “selling out.”

Still later as careers dwindle, no longer can we even obtain the dreams which produce material wealth and we settle painfully for survival and wait out the shrinking time until life stops, shaming our, when at last, we can begin the cycle again and perhaps make better choices in some future life.