Moments

When we look back in time, we often say "wow, I changed so much over the past year." I do that often, I look back at the past and reflect on how much has happened, particularly in the space of the past year or so. And it's always interesting to notice, even if we were not previously aware of these changes, just what has happened to us in the course of that time--how much we have changed as people, how different our opinions have become, and how much more we went through over that time.

But when we really think about it, it wasn't the year that changed us, it was the moments within that year. Almost a year ago now, someone I know spent half an hour agonizing over whether to hang up on someone or not. And I just sat there, wondering how difficult that decision could possibly be--it's a phone, all it takes is the push of a button, the placement of a receiver back onto the hook. Now I understand. Because now, I've agonized over such painstakingly small decisions, realizing the exact impact that they may have on my life.

More than that, all of the bad choices and ill-advised decisions I can recall myself having made in the relatively recent past, all of them were made in a matter of seconds. Certainly I took far more than just those seconds to think about the choice, but ultimately, it was made in several seconds and set in my mind from that point on. Every mistake I made had a defining point, an instance that took mere moments of my life--but from those mere moments, my life was completely altered. I could trace some of the thoughts behind those decisions back several weeks or even months, but the decisions...no, those were made in the moment. No matter the influences, all it took was several seconds.

We underestimate the power that we have given to this entity that humankind has defined as time. It is absolutely relative, but that doesn't make it any less powerful in our lives. When we establish that mere moments have this much power, yet feel no qualms at letting another hour pass by in hapless absolution, we become further hypocrites, ignorant of our own system. Perhaps this is one of the flaws of humanity--establishing this system to give order to our lives, the entity of time, measuring the seconds which determine changes...and then disregarding it all to the best of our ability by squandering the precious moments we ourselves deemed as essential by dragging them out into hours of futility.

Yes, I am a hypocrite. I did just criticize all of humanity for doing the very thing I do for large portions of my day. And I could now just leave it at that, having considered the thought, just move on with my life from here. But I'm not going to. In light of my recent inspiration to not just let things come along and take me through my life, and not letting things "just happen," I'm going to keep this thought in mind and not waste as much time. Of course, I'm not going to be able to fill up my entire life with productive, useful, or otherwise important things, but I am going to cut down on the hours when I stare at the screen of my computer, trying to avoid my life. It's a lesson we may all be wise to learn.