From time immemorial, time, its meaning, has been discussed, chewed over, digested, spit out and rechewed again. Was it a limited concept? Did time continue after death? Does time have parallel universes where time is understood, lived, experienced other ways than on Earth? Is time a river, flowing back and forth on itself? Can time be changed, attacked, manipulated? What does it mean to "stop wasting time"? Do we always have a limit on time? Can we use up our allotted portion? Can we make time last forever? How does time pass and can that passage be affected? Is time relative, rather than immutable?
The list of questions can run on and on, but we must deal with reality, such as it is, and understand that there is no time to waste on these supra-existential questions for they have no import in our reality, in the understood and lived definition of time. Wow, don't I feel as if I am back in Philosophy 1, sitting on the floor of the professor as we so earnestly discussed some of these same questions. I wonder if that class was good or bad, a waste of time or a good use of time. Can I get that time back? Does it matter anyway?
Take a deep look at time today and how we have used and abused it. A federal judge tells a Trump associated lawyer to "stop wasting time" in his eternal plans and efforts to stretch time out, to run out the clock - man-made limitations on time. In any case, why do we set time limits on the prosecutions of crimes, for the injury, the consequences of these crimes send out echoes to the future and back to the past or at least our understanding of that past and its relevancy to us.
Trump has been wasting time for years, though unfortunately that wasted time was ours, rather than his, for while we lost during that time, he was winning, succeeding to hide his crimes, civil and criminal, even as he conditioned too many, so many mis-thinkers, that he has done no wrong and even if he had, it was all for them. Hogwash!!!
He and his cohort are, in fact, wasting time that would be better spent on other matters, such as the 'minor' issues of climate change, the end and ending of time and its relationship to the time mankind has left, if indeed it is a limited time. Over time we once again have witnessed a growth of hatred and violence throughout the world. Is time wasted, perverted, as it is manipulated to service the enemies of society rather than serve the more meritorious? If time can indeed be wasted, then how do we prevent it and get that time back? Or is that time indeed forever lost to us, and the path of humanity forever affected?
More important, can we reverse the consequences of wasted, misused time? Can we undo the hatred, the violence? Can we fix our judicial system where Supreme Court Justices are forced by their own actions and renderings to deny and defend their deterioration and sharp turn away from the proper path and delineations of their responsibilities? Or has time negated that possibility?
Is it possible to turn back the clock and change history, avoid Jan. 6, shatter the rhetoric of poison, where a rebel shouts, " I"m gonna go on a killing spree!" or the filth that spews forth in an ugly, polluted stream of hate from the mouth of Greene who has never yet met an antisemite she did not love, nor any antisemitic, Jew hating statement she would avoid nor condemn. Can we reverse the immigration of her ancestors to this much abused, challenged country of ours? Would these challenges and reversals of time clean time, remove the taint and stains of hate and bigotry and violence?
We must question our use of time. Are we making the best use of it or are we squandering it, hopelessly, more harmful than good, then standing around, dismayed, distraught by what we have wrought, have caused? Are we convinced of our own invincibility as we gaze with imperfect vision at what we have done with our time, completely ignoring the pyrrhic victories we have 'achieved', even as we, in the most poignant definition of war (in Ukraine), "are liberating land, but without people on it"? Win a battle but lose the war is a bitter waste of time indeed.
Throughout the world, right here in America, we are winning some battles here and there, but the victories are often diluted, quickly, as they do not address nor affect the underlying causes that necessitate all the battles. That, most definitely, is a waste of time. Dangerous. Useless. A limited commodity at best.
Personally, I imagine time to be a kind of river, flowing back and forth as decisions and understandings change over time. The river of Time is without will and flows where we direct it. We often direct it into putrid pools of waste, and then struggle hard to reverse that flow. However, the taint, the stink, the stains, of that putrid pool remain on the body, in the river of Time, then absorbed by us. We are wasting Time, polluting, diverting, deviating what should be a mostly clear, unobstructed flow.
In fact, Time is running out.
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