Time vs. the Moment

Time: : the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues.

Engulfed by a warm porcelain bed of water my connection to reality quickly dissolves. I look down to my thigh to discover a colony of bubbles resembling a sphinx. I am reminded of cloud formations and the enchanting beauty they hold for a romantic like myself.  Like time, clouds can be explained in terms of science, but what difference does that really make? Understanding the concept behind something so marvelous does not make it any less awe-inspiring. Clouds are like moments: never is the next exactly like the last.

Is this how we should define time, in moments? Would it change anything to measure time in something other than minutes, hours, days, weeks, or years? Time remains the same no matter how we choose to measure and define it. Constantly moving, unable to be captured, impossible to be manipulated. Even understanding time scientifically doesn’t help us. You cannot make the moments you cherish go by more slowly, or accelerate the ones you wish would pass more quickly. You cannot eradicate the moments you wish hadn’t happened, or repeat the ones you are glad existed. We have failed and always will fail, at controlling time. Truly, it is time that controls and defines us. We determine so much of our lives based on time. Plans, goals, risks, they all depend on time to some extent. So, when someone shatters our timetable, do we shatter with it as well?

Perhaps, time ceases to exist when our definition of who we should be floats about us in a million shards of glass, each containing a tiny moment. Disconnected do they mean less than unified? If each moment is completely unique of another, if a singular moment cannot exist outside of itself, then no moment can ever truly be defined. If we were to define moments using time, then we would greatly depreciate the value of the moment. The moment that a mother hears the cry of her child entering the world may last a mere second, but that is the second she will measure every moment of her life against. On the other hand, a woman trapped for years in a suffocating relationship may take the contents of those years and see them as a singular moment in her life; significant for what she learned and who they allowed her to become, but miniscule in the grand scheme of her life.

I suppose, the real question here is not “what is time?” but rather “how do you value time?” If you allow measurements and 5-year plans to determine the value of time in your life, time will not only define you, but also control you. Being a puppet to time is an exhausting way to live. My dreams do not have expiration dates and I refuse to live as if they do.  

Time: a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future.    

Definition of MOMENT

1

a : a minute portion or point of time : instant

b : a comparatively brief period of time

2

a : present time

b : a time of excellence or conspicuousness

3

: importance in influence or effect

4

obsolete : a cause or motive of action

5

: a stage in historical or logical development…