Time

I've decided to write about such a mundane thing as time.

A lot of people take it for granted, but it may be one of the most important things we have - and we really don't have that much of it. We may live for up to 100 years, and yet that span of time is but an infinitesimal flash compared to eternity. What then would be the point of living if it's as insignificant as that?

What is time anyway? It's a concept that we ourselves created to quantify the intangibility of our existence. We use it as a primary measure of life. We count the time we exist in this world and put it in our gravestones. We created time to be able to control our lives. We live by schedules and appointments. We consider a full life a long one. But the thing is, we really can't take hold of time. No matter how much we try, time will always prevail. Cultures and civilizations have been faded by time before. Like a grindstone, it turns everything to dust - eventually. Time is one thing we don't have any hold over, despite our attempts to quantify it with terms like seconds, minutes, years, millenia. We can't stop it either. It keeps on flowing, and will keep on flowing long after our sun has burned up and the earth is turned to dust.

So the question remains of our existence. Why do we live if we're going to die anyway? What is it that we're meant to do in the interim between birth and death? Well, the answer may be as complicated or as simple as we're willing to spend time thinking on it. A bolt of lightning exists for a fraction of a second. It ceases to exist moments after it is born. But in that moment of its life, it shines very brightly, illuminating the sky. And even after its death, its thunder is still heard. And anything it has struck will have been changed. It may start a wildfire that clears an entire forest; it may crack open a huge tree; it may carve a piece out of a building; it may strike a person dead.

We humans are similar to lightning in a sense. Despite our brief flash of existence, we do more to everything around us than what a lone bolt can dream of. We change lives of those around us. And after we have died, most would leave a rolling thunder that would echo in generations to come.

We may be brief flashes compared to eternity, but those flashes shine for all their worth and burn with such intensity that they give light and warmth to the otherwise cold and dark passage of time.

-Michael Gerard(I'm back)