"Are we thankful about the things in life that really matter?" I heard myself thinking aloud. Maybe we indeed are, in a deeply personal way...for me, it's almost so personal that the gratitude stays wrapped up inside, treasured, caressed, well cared for...but not well expressed. What should we be thankful about? To live, have parents, have a family, have an education ? .... or maybe, as it suddenly occurred to me as a slightly home-sick 30-year old who had just wished his dad on his birthday, I am most fortunate to just exist ... to just be part of TIME ... to experience it ... try understand it ... an entity that queerly wraps us up within it, but it is also something that is essentially created and given meaning to by the very us that it so well defines! "How interesting!" I thought to myself, before embarking on writing this blog.
TIME is such an erratic and wonderful teacher ... in so many ways like our parents. From the moment we are born, at one instant it is teaching us the value of patience, and on the other it is trying to coach us on the prize of speed. In one moment, it is teaching us to be exuberant and young, but on the other it wants us to be wise and aged. Like so many other treasures of life, we only start valuing TIME more as we have progressively less of it. But who's complaining, as long as the memories keep TIME from fading, and wishes keep pulling over more TIME!
Yes, that is what I am most thankful for ... I am thankful for TIME ... the eternal teacher, or in Einstein's words, the manifestation of the Almighty. I have never been a very religious person in any institutional sense, but for me if anything hints at a Creator or a spiritual singularity that is difficult to reconcile with, it would be TIME. I still remember the opening lines of the Hindu epic series "Mahabharata" on Doordarshan channel (when we were kids), with the heavy voice saying "Main samay hoon..." (translates to "I am time..."), and with a little bit of Einstein's relativity, Stephen Hawkins and String theory spicing up the physics in my head at just the right time of our adolescence, I get goosebumps every time I recall that line. Tick tock tick tock ... the analog clock next to our bed keeps up the sound of TIME!
TIME is such an erratic and wonderful teacher ... in so many ways like our parents. From the moment we are born, at one instant it is teaching us the value of patience, and on the other it is trying to coach us on the prize of speed. In one moment, it is teaching us to be exuberant and young, but on the other it wants us to be wise and aged. Like so many other treasures of life, we only start valuing TIME more as we have progressively less of it. But who's complaining, as long as the memories keep TIME from fading, and wishes keep pulling over more TIME!
Yes, that is what I am most thankful for ... I am thankful for TIME ... the eternal teacher, or in Einstein's words, the manifestation of the Almighty. I have never been a very religious person in any institutional sense, but for me if anything hints at a Creator or a spiritual singularity that is difficult to reconcile with, it would be TIME. I still remember the opening lines of the Hindu epic series "Mahabharata" on Doordarshan channel (when we were kids), with the heavy voice saying "Main samay hoon..." (translates to "I am time..."), and with a little bit of Einstein's relativity, Stephen Hawkins and String theory spicing up the physics in my head at just the right time of our adolescence, I get goosebumps every time I recall that line. Tick tock tick tock ... the analog clock next to our bed keeps up the sound of TIME!
"Distance tests a horse's strength.. Time reveals a man's character" - Chinese proverb
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