Does anybody really know what time it is?
As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me
What the time was that was on my watch, yeah
And I said…
Does anybody really know what time it is?
– Chicago
One uncomfortable truth about aging is that it feels wasteful. For most of us, our brains continue to expand with useful information as do our problem-solving capabilities. When you’re old, however, at least in our society, aging usually equates with being relegated to the used shoebox at a kids’ dance studio, hardly ever needed. That realization also helps us understand there’s plenty of time, but maybe not enough life.
Leonardo Da Vinci, however, said, “Time stays long enough for those who use it.”
Given a choice between watching life pass me by or enthusiastically working to create a legacy that helps others, I choose legacy creation. I’m not striving for immortality; it’s just a more productive journey than the alternative.
Once you notice the sands in your personal hourglass rushing like the Star Wars depiction of a journey into hyperspace, you realize the unrest we sometimes experience between twilight and sleep is not so much fear of death, but fear of running out of productive time, fear of relevance and not getting done whatever we hoped we were put here to do.
For most of us, embracing the concept that life itself evolved through billions of years of complex chemical interactions may be overwhelming. For those who believe life is all just an explainable result of that evolution, like a tree or a bird that is here until it’s not, then deeper meaning has to be derived or created from other sources. Most people, however, need a safety net, a handle to grasp onto so they don’t free-fall through infinite intellectual hyperbole.
For those who accept our existence may be random or arbitrary, the burden of that belief may sometimes feel unbearable. At the same time, because most of us can’t stand to think this all might be infinity within nothingness, the deep faith of others becomes much easier to comprehend.
It might be interesting to travel through this fleeting journey with no guiding principles, no moral compass, and no ethical boundaries, a narcissist without any soul. Every day would consist of random self-gratification. On the other hand, as we’ve observed so often recently, the spiritual, mental, and emotional black hole of emptiness of that journey is well-documented.
We do know, definitively, we are all connected with everything and everyone in the universe at a molecular level. So, back to time. If we think positively, we can feel peace in this quote by Rabindranath Tagore, “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
I once had a philosophy professor say finding God was like looking for a black cat with its eyes closed in a dark room. And the religious successfully find it. Religion, of course, is the most popular way of dealing with this challenge of balancing infinity and mortality. So, too is embracing goodness.
Embracing goodness, no matter your belief system, is a great answer, a wonderful handle upon which to cling. Think about the ethical implications of The Golden Rule. It exists in some form in every major religion of the world. Maybe just doing the right thing can be enough. Once we acknowledge our complex web of connectivity, why not spend each day being good to others, and thus being good to ourselves?
What if we’re born, we live, and we die, and that’s it?
Deriving meaning and facing our own mortality through that reality can be an overwhelming challenge. Life shouldn’t be about guilt. It should be about making clear, positive choices between things like giving vs. greed or loving vs. hating, kindness vs. meanness, positive actions vs. negativity, and honesty vs. dishonesty. Those values represent the good.
I say regardless of our personal beliefs, embrace goodness. Leave a positive legacy. You can’t go wrong.
Nick Jacobs of Windber is a health-care consultant and author of two books.