The Tenacity of Time

As an early philosopher, Saint Augustine pondered many concepts of the universe with much success; his writings have very heavily influenced the progress of western Christianity and philosophy. There seems to be one concept, however, that he could never understand, and that is the concept of time. Augustine once said that he knew exactly what time was until someone asked him to define it, at which point he was at a loss for words. It would appear that to him the concept of time was like the concept of being. It is impossible to define what being is, because the very definition includes the concept itself. To be is—it just is. Time is—well really it just is. But I, being me, have attempted to “define” time. 

I've noticed that people who like to think tend to enjoy venturing on journeys such as "defining time" all to end up close to where they started—with still no definition but even further confusion. I'd still like to take this venture because I believe in the importance of thinking about things that effect our lives so very acutely, as time clearly does. Time, at its most simplistic and childish definition, is thought of as the ticking of a clock, the hour of the day and p.m. versus a.m. But, based on how much we value, plan according to, and yearn to fill time, it is clear that it means much more to us than a clock; time itself still exists in this world, regardless of how we choose to or choose not to measure it.

Everything we do centers around time; we are constantly talking about time. We talk about "spending time" and "having time" and "giving time" and "taking the time," as though time is some physical substance that we can spend, have, give, and take. Time is obviously not a physical substance. We talk about other physically non-substantial things in a similar manner as well. Take love, for example. We talk about "giving love" and "having love," as though love is a type of physical matter. The difference, however, between love and time is that love has emotional substance, and therefore may at least feel like it has physical substance entering the soul as well, whereas time doesn't even have that. Time is neither a physically or emotionally substantial form of matter. So why, then, do we think of it as such?

My answer to the question above lies in the tenacity of time. Time is persistent. Time is determined. Time is constantly gripping upon us to be felt, heard, and filled in such a way that generally speaking only something with physical or at least emotional substance could. Time is perhaps the root of all insanity (tick, tock, tick, tock); time demands to be filled with rational, emotional, physical, or spiritual activity and if it is not filled with those things it will be fill itself with anxious and eventually insane activity. 

Ironically enough, as we fill time with activities, time itself governs our activities. We plan everything from when we will eat and sleep to when we will fall in love and get married according to the governance of time. When it is the appropriate time of day, we sleep, just as when it is the appropriate time of life, we fall in love. We hesitate for seconds or years to do certain things because we think and/or we plan that we will have time or it will be time later.

It is as though we can't decide for ourselves when things must happen and must be told by time so we don't jump the gun or fall behind. For this reason, I would propose that time is laughing at us. Ticking on, dreadfully and carelessly, time tortures us by captivating our actions and consuming our thoughtful need to plan, all the while perhaps chuckling at our obedience, waiting for us to do something about it. We far too often remember to follow set schedules simply for the sake of following time and far too often forget the beloved advice from the movie We Bought a Zoo that “Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage. Just literally 20 seconds of embarrassing bravery and I promise you, something great will come out of it.” I would propose that actions performed in a random 20 seconds of unplanned, unprepared, embarrassing bravery are the soulful man’s way of stealing 20 seconds away from time—exactly what time itself has been waiting for us to do all along.