E-Paper
Life is ephemeral, rejoice to the hilt the joy of being
A fleeting moment entombed in eternity, or a grand narrative skipped in blink-and-you-miss-it instant, is nothing but perception of the human mind
We grumble about deadlines yet laugh with friends as if seconds are eternal. Time’s true abundance or scarcity is often in the perception, not the clock. - Don Huely
A fleeting moment entombed in eternity, or a grand narrative skipped in blink-and-you-miss-it instant, is nothing but perception of the human mind. Almost every day when I teach my students of literature, I explain to them the concept of physical or clock time vis-à-vis psychological time - how the same interval of 40 minutes when they are sitting outside with their friends, during their free lecture appears to pass in a jiffy whereas the period spent in a lecture hall becomes stretched and seems unsurpassable. Metaphysical poet John Donne realised this predicament of the human mind and heart way back in the early 17th century and responded to his beloved’s anxiousness in “Sweetest Love I do not Go”,
O how feeble is man’s power, That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour, Nor a lost hour recall!
Man’s ineffectuality to expand his happy moments and the inability to contract difficult times speaks volumes of the fact that life is ephemeral and hence every opportunity to rejoice must be snatched and lived to the hilt.
For those of us who continue to rue over unending deadlines and lost time, if only for once, would introspect and check if they are short of time or are they simply disregarding those precious little moments that can be counted as a life of bliss. Remember the first time your toddler took
his/her first step? When you first let off their finger at the school gate. When you received your first salary. When you stole your first kiss. I’m sure you can recall them all vividly as if it all happened yesterday and such are the tricks your mind plays with you.
The cadence of human existence bends to the rhythm of our emotions. In solitude, it stretches endlessly like a seashore or a vast desert. In camaraderie, it soars like a bird in skies that knows no bounds, yet it appears that the flight, somehow, has been curtailed due to paucity of time. The paradox of time, thus, has always been an enigma to decipher and ends with a meek surrender to our mind’s perceptive powers.
The abundance or scarcity of time also happens to be a subjective experience. No two individuals can experience time in a similar fashion. Sitting in the same classroom, an interested and engrossed student would wish the lecture to continue while in a similar span, a disinterested student would look at his watch probably a zillion times, waiting for the ordeal to be over.
We all are a part of this make-believe world where we struggle to meet deadlines day in and day out and in this melee, we forget how precious moments are! Let us, therefore, learn to stretch these limited moments by living every second as a lifetime and enjoying it as if life is nothing but a party.
Ever wonder why Bollywood lyricist Gulzar penned these lines, “Aane wala pal, jaane wala hai… ho sake to isme zindagi bita do, pal ye bhi jale wala hai.”
