The Tide and Time

 The Tide and Time

The tide and time wait for no one. As each day is plucked from the calendar of life without us even realizing it, all that remains are a collection of memories—sweet, bitter, and pungent. Today’s human is accompanied by a long line of desires and a chronic lack of time to fulfill them. In the frantic race to achieve everything they wish for, some succeed, while others fail miserably. Some keep running until the very end of their lives. Even those who achieve success begin a “death race” for even greater victories. In the burning desire to conquer the world, most humans turn into poor souls who simply forget to live.

The sun does not ask anyone before it rises in the morning or sets in the evening. The crescent moon does not wait for our permission to bloom in the sky, and it is the same with the stars. Meanwhile, our lifespan decreases and our responsibilities increase. Most people spend their youth sighing about the vibrancy of childhood, and their old age longing for the energy of youth. In those moments, anyone would say with a deep breath, “Oh! How fast this time has passed!”

A person’s success in life is determined by how wisely they use their time and how they understand they have spent it. Only those who realize that time waits for no one can truly enjoy life in its real sense. Time moves like slow clouds when we are sad, and like a passing breeze when we are happy. If we can understand each breath we take, we can also recognize the movement of time. If we become conscious of the heartbeats within our bodies, the mind will begin to hear the sound of the clock’s second hand.

Those who are mindful of time should not postpone for tomorrow what can be done today. This awareness is, in itself, an alertness toward life. The sad reality is that most people gain this awareness only in their final days. When the oxygen mask is removed from one’s face in an ICU—leaving them unconscious with no other way out—at that moment, the mind will whisper in the ear once more: “The tide and time wait for no one!”

When he was ill and expecting death, the famous writer Gabriel García Márquez wrote: “If I had another life, I wouldn’t close my eyes for even a moment. Because I know that for every moment I close my eyes, I lose sixty seconds of light.”