Ahh, How Steadfastly Time Continues to Flow
Prompt: How do you find beauty in the passage of time if one day you know it will leave you behind?
Response: It begins with acceptance. Understanding the harsh reality of our collective existence at its core being fleeting by nature. Our existence kowtows to the whim of our relentless master, time.
Maya Angelou, one of the greatest ambassador of empathy this world has ever known, once said something along the lines of you can not truly live in the present until you accept death. She described her own experience with doing such as “a great, freeing production,” allowing her to live more fully in the present moment.
There is something disturbing yet comforting in the idea that I may not be remembered. In fact, I know with a guarantee that I will inevitably be forgotten, and so shall any person who is reading this. Our existence as individuals is rooted in anonymity for no one person’s legacy will stand the test of time.
No amount of fame, fortune, prowess of character, or other aspect of one’s being could ensure that a person’s legacy is remembered for eternity when faced with an infinite, unfeeling, and ever expanding cosmos.
I find so much beauty in the fact that what I am, the components of what make up my body, ME as a living organism formed primarily from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, calcium, potassium, and some other elements, at my base level the ingredients of my physical and spiritual being wether that be the actual raw materials, the energy in my neurons that gives me sentience, or whatever…based on Newton’s first law of thermodynamics “energy can never be created or destroyed”… has always existed since the beginning of time.
These ingredients, unfamiliar to me or my spirit are mine but for a brief moment of time, and yet I exist. Here in this moment…sentient, feeling, alive!
I am not afraid of being left behind for that would suppose I must be separate from all other matter in this universe. I find beauty, meaning, morality, passion in the fact that at some level I have impacted this world/universe.
In the stories and memories I have made, the physical objects I have interacted with, the energy I have manipulated to grow into who I have become physically and spiritually. Even if the only memory of me or my impact in this universe is found in my slight disruption of the flow of water through the water cycle, I am what I come from, wether that origin is familiar to me or not, I shall return to the cosmos.
I am inspired by how beautiful the anonymity of time is as a concept. To be lost to time is to have given time something worth loosing.
Cheers to wherever the f*ck I end up after I am done with this corporeal body that I so genuinely love!
Date: December 8th, 2024
