Saturday, August 15, 2009

“LIFE LINES”

By Jack Reeves

"But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day." -- Benjamin Disraeli

What's the most determinative influence on anything that exists? The sun? air? heat? gravity?

It's time. Existence is bracketed in this not-understood phenomenon. Arguably, the key to creation, God, and eternity is tied to time. According to some respected thinkers, we'll never untangle the relationship.

Apart from physical and metaphysical mysteries, though, time is no mystery. And the older we become, the more time acquires an unfamiliar poignancy. It’s about a half century before the time plug-in kicks in.

It certainly changes the way we view the moment. There comes an intensity, heightened by an urgency to savor to the fullest that which we cannot stop its passing.

A dew drop holds a universe; a planet's light reflecting off a lake brings tears. Cosmic mystery flows through a cobweb. Time--our precious time--is tinged with intensity.

Like a symphony, the finale is always the most powerful and passionate.

"As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated of dead and living. Not the intense moment isolated, with no before and after, but a lifetime burning in every moment."--T.S. Eliot

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