Time and memory

Shakil Hasan

Http:// www.hyphenmagazine.ca

We plan and we stall. We sleep on it, pushes it farther until we have no time: then we rush. Why is that? Why can’t we do it right away. We have already invested in planning, now we have to execute, why do we still wait, until it’s almost at the end. We wait, wait for what? We prefer doing things that we like, and leave planned, required works, duties that’s been put on our shoulder on wait, as if we are doing them only since we are bound, for not having any other options open. Procrastination, we are all fond of it.

I ask myself, when I am not doing anything, procrastinating on life’s demands, what is that I am waiting on, am I, in my waiting, thinking? When I am not doing absolutely nothing, not watching TV, not reading, not in any kind of activities, is my mind and heart trying to contemplate on something deeper? If I contemplate deep enough in my non-doing moments, would anything precious, like about deeper truth of life would be revealed to me? Probably my mind hopes that, waits for a eureka moment! 

What revelation we hope for in our wait? Probably to understand the meaning of our existence, purpose of our life, the time we are being allotted.  Grasping the meaning of this time, that is ever passing by, from future to now to past, can only be experienced, through its Now-ness. It is “now” that we experience, but it’s always running away and we are always becoming. So we cannot make any meaning out of it. So we rely on our memory to measure what we have become. We try to make out meaning out of our memory.

But memory by nature is fragmented. We tend to remember only favourable things, and try to hide rest under the carpet of our forgetfulness. So when we achieve a point of non-active- waiting-ness, in our mind when we are trying to contemplate on our life’s meaning and purpose, our mind relies on the the memories that we have, from our fragmented reservoir of past  events, we try to find out a pattern, the design that I am.