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TIME WHISPERS THAT WE ARE STRANGERS HERE

15/03/2021 14:43:00 Editor

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Sir,

Time is constant and regular, and the fact that a minute will always be a minute for everyone everywhere on earth doesn’t mean that is the same everywhere in the universe. But what do we mean with concepts such as the ‘beginning of time’ and the ‘end of time’? Maybe it is the beginning and end of things in their present form. With the infinite mind, it would appear everything exists in the here and eternal now. Time is only measured by mankind. It is us who want to divide time in terms of a month, year, week, and a day.

Divide

We divide the years into a new year and an old year. Whereas in nature everything just is. Time itself knows no segmentation into a particular celebration. All this exists in our minds. This is not based on nature but our measurement. As relating time, we continuously hear talk such as; I shall be back, ‘now;’ I will do it, ‘now;’ He has just left, ‘now.’ From these statements, what do we mean by ‘now’? Before we do what we set to do ‘now,’ the now is already the past. Seemingly ‘now’ is difficult to measure, and it’s gone immediately we refer to it, though at the same time the present is now. The other issue on time and us is found in these words: “This year was a very bad year for me.” Isn’t it that the issue of a year being bad exists only in the mind not in nature, and that there is nothing bad about a year?

Deny

This is not to deny that we do have misfortune happening in our lives. The year itself, as our measurement of time, knows nothing about badness or goodness – it is only our categorisation that makes us particularise a year as bad or good. There’s no autocrat somewhere in the universe that makes a year bad for an individual or an entity; life just happens. Mostly, our misfortunes or fortunes are based on our choices, hence the saying: “What you sow, you reap.” Henry B Eyring once said; “Time passes at a fixed rate, we cannot store it. We can decide what we want to do with it or not do with it.” In a sense, it has been said, we can’t ‘save’ time like we can save water that would otherwise run away; we can make time serve as water that runs into a reservoir.

Inherit

And in the words of Brigham Young: “The property which we inherit from God is our time, and the power to choose in the disposition of same. This is the real capital that is bequeathed unto us by God; all the rest is what He may be pleased to add unto us.” Time is the real valuable asset for us and all that we do, we do within, not without time on this planet. But, as Neal A. Maxwell says: “Time is clearly not our natural dimension. Thus it is that we are never really at home in time. Whereas a bird is at home in the air, we are clearly not at home in time because we belong to eternity. Time whispers to us that we are strangers here. If time were natural to us, why is it that we have so many clocks and wear wristwatches?” In the eternities these will be irrelevant and obsolete.