When you are too busy trying to catch your own tail- life rushes by!
The greens pass by the way side in a blur. And we miss out on what makes life worthwhile!
The children grow up.
The hair turn gray.
The skin sags and the muscles lose their power.
The world largely stays the same but our presence in it becomes more and more 'aged'.
Think about the cosmic calender that Sagan devised to give the proper perspective.
If the Universe was formed on the New Year's Day a year ago, we came about just about at 10:32 on December 31.
Our distant ancestors knew nothing about time perspective and defined their life by the today and the now they lived. Each moment they survived was a moment they had lived- truly lived. And they did not even give it a thought.
They simply survived.
And, they simply carried on.
Walk miles to get food. Run miles in search of a safe place to hole up for the night. Wake up and start off once again.
Time is when Nature does things- events that happen Now- each Now. There is no Tomorrow and no Yesterday! There is no clock and no clock time to bind and gag and govern when we MUST wake up and go to 'work'.
Gradually,however, we defeated the immediate dangers that threatened our survival- the wild animals that could kill were scared of the Fire we learnt to control. The elements of Nature that could drown us or blow us away or burn us to cinders or freeze us to icicles were tamed and we created safe shelters. We also realised that we could work so that the Nature, and her cycles provided us with safe food in summer or fall if we planted in spring.
We gained time and safety- and along with it a perspective. The perspective of Time- separate from the cycles of the Nature. This time could be the time to rest, and to eat, or simply to gaze at the sky and think.
Somewhere around 11:59:52 (The Time Paradox- Phil Zimbardo), our ancestors started creating wares that could be traded or sold. With this came the need to plan for a future where more wares could be bought- the more the buying power- the more the respect- and the longer it would last- FUTURE- became a perspective that defined the present and restricted it.
Now, our ancestors lost the immediate threats to life- they were safe and secure. They, instead, gained the perspective of the future- on the continued ability to provide the same safety for their children that they lived in their today. They took the day for granted and thought of tomorrow only in terms of what they needed to do to secure it.
Around 11:59:59 on Sagan's Cosmic calender, about 150 years ago, man became obsessed with time as we know it today. With the Industrial revolution defining the hours that a worker could work and the amount of work needed to generate the product that could be sold to generate the wealth that could secure tomorrow- man became a prisoner of the future. Each moment was a safe moment that he did not even care to acknowledge his own breath. He now needed to rush from sun up to sun down to simply create.
We are living that reality- a reality that often lets the greens of the trees rush past in a great blurr.
We are living in that reality that often fails to even cast a wistful eye on the clear blue sky and marvel at the Creator's sense of colour and grandiosity.
We are living in that reality where present is simply a moment that is soon in the past- where another few tens of thousands of calculations ( perhaps more) have already been done by the computer that click under our fingers that cannot type and tap fast enough!
Somewhere down the evolutionary time-scale, down the cosmic calender, we became creatures of the future while trying hard to keep up with a world that was fast speeding around us and leaving us in the past even in our present! After all- what ever we CAN experience has already taken place!
And whatever we WANT o experience MUST be created in the future!
Where did that blessed moment of the present breath slip away????
The greens pass by the way side in a blur. And we miss out on what makes life worthwhile!
The children grow up.
The hair turn gray.
The skin sags and the muscles lose their power.
The world largely stays the same but our presence in it becomes more and more 'aged'.
Think about the cosmic calender that Sagan devised to give the proper perspective.
If the Universe was formed on the New Year's Day a year ago, we came about just about at 10:32 on December 31.
Our distant ancestors knew nothing about time perspective and defined their life by the today and the now they lived. Each moment they survived was a moment they had lived- truly lived. And they did not even give it a thought.
They simply survived.
And, they simply carried on.
Walk miles to get food. Run miles in search of a safe place to hole up for the night. Wake up and start off once again.
Time is when Nature does things- events that happen Now- each Now. There is no Tomorrow and no Yesterday! There is no clock and no clock time to bind and gag and govern when we MUST wake up and go to 'work'.
Gradually,however, we defeated the immediate dangers that threatened our survival- the wild animals that could kill were scared of the Fire we learnt to control. The elements of Nature that could drown us or blow us away or burn us to cinders or freeze us to icicles were tamed and we created safe shelters. We also realised that we could work so that the Nature, and her cycles provided us with safe food in summer or fall if we planted in spring.
We gained time and safety- and along with it a perspective. The perspective of Time- separate from the cycles of the Nature. This time could be the time to rest, and to eat, or simply to gaze at the sky and think.
Somewhere around 11:59:52 (The Time Paradox- Phil Zimbardo), our ancestors started creating wares that could be traded or sold. With this came the need to plan for a future where more wares could be bought- the more the buying power- the more the respect- and the longer it would last- FUTURE- became a perspective that defined the present and restricted it.
Now, our ancestors lost the immediate threats to life- they were safe and secure. They, instead, gained the perspective of the future- on the continued ability to provide the same safety for their children that they lived in their today. They took the day for granted and thought of tomorrow only in terms of what they needed to do to secure it.
Around 11:59:59 on Sagan's Cosmic calender, about 150 years ago, man became obsessed with time as we know it today. With the Industrial revolution defining the hours that a worker could work and the amount of work needed to generate the product that could be sold to generate the wealth that could secure tomorrow- man became a prisoner of the future. Each moment was a safe moment that he did not even care to acknowledge his own breath. He now needed to rush from sun up to sun down to simply create.
We are living that reality- a reality that often lets the greens of the trees rush past in a great blurr.
We are living in that reality that often fails to even cast a wistful eye on the clear blue sky and marvel at the Creator's sense of colour and grandiosity.
We are living in that reality where present is simply a moment that is soon in the past- where another few tens of thousands of calculations ( perhaps more) have already been done by the computer that click under our fingers that cannot type and tap fast enough!
Somewhere down the evolutionary time-scale, down the cosmic calender, we became creatures of the future while trying hard to keep up with a world that was fast speeding around us and leaving us in the past even in our present! After all- what ever we CAN experience has already taken place!
And whatever we WANT o experience MUST be created in the future!
Where did that blessed moment of the present breath slip away????
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