A Time

There was once a time where the place you now sit was inhabited by others.

You believe you are spending a moment alone, but you share this space with the imprint of souls that came and left long before your existence was even considered a possibility. It can feel comforting or disconcerting, depending on where you may be. But there was a time.

There will be a time where no two bricks of the building you inhabit will remain next to one another. The structures that we base our lives around were never meant to be permanent. They will be separated, whether it be over the space of a hundred years or a single second. But no matter the method, there will be a time.

There should not be a time where the assumption is that we all exist in isolation. Dead white men have spent both their lives and have slipped into the minds of others figuring out what it means to be selfish, what it means to be in community, what it means to exist. No matter how the future progresses, our spaces will continue to intersect, and we’ll continue our arbitrary exchanges of words and money and violence and love. At the end of day, we’ll learn that our own universes and all of their overlap ended up being more impactful than anything the world around us could have tried to be. But to believe in the idea that we exist independent of others, that we can thrive without another soul present in our lives ? There should not be a time.

There needs to be a time where you confront the fact that you will never have all the answers. You are simply too small, too minute to figure it all out. But that’s not a bad thing. We were never meant to know it all. Instead, we were meant to explore. From the farthest stars of space to the smallest galaxies of our minds, we find joy in the pursuit of things we could never wish to fully understand. Some say it’s a waste, but perhaps this never ending quest is what it means to be human. In order to keep exploring that idea, there needs to be a time.

There is going to be a time where you are absolutely on top of the world, but your feet won’t be making contact. Your head will not just be up in the clouds, but somewhere even higher. Somewhere in space where the overwhelming absence of anything will leave you breathless. The world will move on without you, and you’ll watch on as life keeps going. It may seem far away from where you are now, but there is going to be a time.

There was probably a time where you were wondering what it means to be a time. I mean, can there be a time for a time? Or what if a time needs a time so that it can be used as a time to figure out what a time is? If we go too far, a time is given far too much of a time to examine its existence as a time, and a time ends up feeling like nothing more than a tumble of syllables on the tongue, a pile of mush on the brain, a quick puff of space in the ongoing push of time. No matter what it means to be a time, in order for there to be a time to figure all of this out, there was probably a time.

There should be allowed a time where you let the smallest detail of your day fill your senses. You might stop in the middle of a sidewalk, deciding to take in the journey of a rolling plastic bag. Or maybe it’ll be a pause in the day, to stop breathing on autopilot, trying to figure out what it really feels like to be alive. You will be late to the next commitment, but it’s okay. There are more dire questions to be answered, like what might happen if you chose to lay down and cry. Right now. Right here. Just a moment, in the space where you are. So that we can think about it, there should be allowed a time.

There had been a time where the world crumbled apart, where the earth shook and everything good and holy tumbled to the ground. They say that suffering is relative, but at that time, you still felt broken. A tremor filled your body for weeks and months on end, and the space around you was filled with so much fear and anger that anybody who approached you was left as nothing more than a shadow of smeared ash on the ground. You radiated vitriol and spit out hatred, and no one dared to approach you. There had been a time.

There was a time where the fire went out, leaving you not much more than smoldering embers and a smoke that left you choking in your grief. You knew in your heart that nobody was likely to return. You had been the forest and you had been the fire, and now it was time to face the consequences. Even though it all felt futile, you pushed yourself up, in search of the nearest sign of civilization. You were tired, lungs burning with the scorched air, but you knew that you couldn’t exist out there alone. You whispered a soft prayer into the empty space ahead of you, and started walking. It hurts to think about, but there was a time.

There was never a time where you didn’t matter. It may have felt like the space between you and the rest of the world was a distance that could never be traveled. But you did the impossible, and you made it back. It might feel like it was all for nothing, but there was never such a time.