Time's Curse

Time How I Loathe Thee

By Josh Watkins

Time, how I loathe thee,

You are what everyone wants,

But no one can keep.

You tempt me to no end,

Torturing me, annoying me, consuming me.

When I want you, you flee,

 Leaving me behind, eating the seconds as they tick away.

But when I don’t want to see your face,

You drag on and on, making me turn insane.

You are vile, deceitful, arrogant, and cruel.

I try so hard to grasp you,

But through my fingers you slide like a greased eel.

I cannot fathom why so many people

spend their precious money to gain you.

You steal precious moments, amazing memories,

consume history, and whisk away the ones we love.

You make me early, or you make me late.

Do you care? Do you have a heart?

No, only hands and a face do you own.

The hands don’t stop counting and your face just laughs.

Well laugh all you want you time Nazi you.

For all this while, you have been taunting me,

I have disguised a secret.

A secret that will knock you off your pedestal,

and bring you to your knees,

that shiny face of yours will cloud and shed tears.

My secret is that when He returns,

Eternity will follow, obliterating you and everything of you.

So time, take a bow, for the end is near.

When we are young, we want time to go by faster because children are impatient. They want to grow up so they don't have bed times, they can eat what they want, go where they want, drive a car, earn money to buy what they want, watch movies and TV shows for more mature audiences (even though some sneak around this one), and do adult stuff. Then, as you get older and have more responsibilities, you realize how quickly time goes away and you wish you could have it all back. 

I wrote this back in 2010 when it started to sink in how fast time actually goes. Memories and exciting past events that I would recall seemed only a year ago, but in reality were at least 3 or more. With this epiphany, I began to really hate time. My loathing for time came from my disliking for change. How much did I hate change? Whenever I went out to a fast food restaurant I got the same thing. Subway: Subway club with lettuce, pickles, and mayo. McDonald's: Double Quarter-Pounder w/Cheese medium meal. This rarely changed...for 15 years! I love to travel, but hate moving. I don't like the packing and unpacking, I don't like the different house feel, I don't like trying to find everything and trying to fit in all over again. Sometimes, change is a good thing, but I don't have to necessarily like it.

This is one of my first attempts at hinting at the Lord in a non-Christian piece hoping to hit both sides of the spectrum.

The main inspiration came from thinking about the glory day of my childhood and the days before all my friends went off to college. I dwell a lot on the past but only on the good times. To me, it feels like I'm still in 2011 and not about to enter into 2014. Sometimes, I try to relive those days, but as time changes, the allure does as well and time can just destroy all that jubilant emotion.

There is a Hope. One word...Eternity. A place where time doesn't exist. Also known as Paradise and heaven. No time=serenity. My word to you younger ones is this. No one can control time and no one know how much time they have left. We could be here for another hundred years or be gone as I'm writing this. Cherish the time you have now and don't live in despair, dullness, and depression. In the words of Tim McGraw "Live like you were dyin'" Because one day, time will bow down to eternity and depending what side you are on, you may wish you hadn't wasted it.