What is life’s most destructive force?
Time. After all, with its passage, nothing remains the same.
Consider the greats of every era who become but lore and myth, until even those are lost. Or the monuments erected to stand the test of time, eventually eroding into indistinguishable landmarks. Or the beliefs held by civilizations that become the beliefs held by none. Or the memories that fade to dreams that fade to…
This never-ceasing tyranny often goes under appreciated until the hands of time have our end tightly within its grasp.
It’s why we often say “youth is wasted on the young.” Besides being an adage to (not so subtly) knock on younger generations, it encapsulates how many feel they failed to take full advantage of life until life inevitably leaves them.
Dreams pushed off until abilities decline and the winding road appears that much more windy. Adventures delayed until the toll on the body and mind outweigh the expansion of the body and mind. Investments in relationships sacrificed until no price could afford the present value.
At some point, change becomes an agent of fear rather than an agent of progress. We attempt to hold the present when the present is already gone.
Going back to the title of the essay, some would contend death is life's most destructive force. But death (and conversely life) are the states, while time is the force and process. Time is the one way roaring river carrying us from life to death at an accelerated pace.
Recognizing death as the end state, time becomes the universal force who’s pull only grows stronger with age:
- Consider the 5 year-old kid who naively ponders death and what that means for him, so discomforted by its abstract emptiness until soothed by a parent’s embrace.
- Or the adolescent who, thanks to our ever better documented lives, sees how not only his (grand)parents actually looked just like him, but also how they aged just as he is now. More real the idea of his own mortality becomes, his own greying.
- Or the college grad who sees ever more the world of possibility with excitement but simultaneously feels time’s tightening grip. “There’s so much to be done, but ever less time."
(If the above sounds like they’re coming from personal experience, you may want to trust your instincts)
This is what makes time such a strong common shared experience, this pervasive pull on our lives. No matter your wealth, color of skin, or intelligence, none can escape its gravity.
So to be a defeatist and admit Nostradamus had it right all along - just await our inevitable end? Not my cup of tea but to each their own.
My take is to take this most destructive force and shape it into life’s most creative force. Let it pulse our vitality, leading us to live our most capable us. Let it motivate us to be our best us because we know “we” have an end, and we never know when that end will come (for us or our legacy).
Surrendering is pretty easy though:
- Not taking that first step
- Not being able to integrate loss and grief
- Not learning from the past
- Not picking up that hobby
- Not pushing past the hard times for that same hobby
- Not adventuring outside our comfort zone
- Not putting yourself out there (e.g., this website)
- Not kicking the bad habit
- Not confronting the awkward situation
- Not asking the questions. Each and every one
- Not knowing when it’s time to call an end to a project
- Not doing you, instead doing someone else’s you
- The list goes on and on...
It’s probably the default to surrender. It’s hard, and inertia doesn’t help. Time wins in the end anyways, right?
I contend that’s exactly the point though. Time will always win this war of our lifespan and legacy. We can’t change that fact.
But it’s not a fact that time'll win the even more important war - the war of now, where time’s hold is weakest.
That’s a question we’ll all answer through every moment, decision, and action, culminating in our final moments.
Even then, at that final moment, no one else will know the answer but us.
Did we live the life worth living? Did we embrace its challenges and joys? Did we meet our measurement of life?
What’s your sense today?
