Today's blog posting is a special one for me because it marks the one year anniversary of this blog. It was on June 19, 2012, that I wrote the first entry on this blog: Phrase of the Day: TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT. The subject was bullying and a case at an elementary school in Texas was highlighted. While not a prolific writer on this blog in terms of frequency of postings, in addition to bullying, issues covered have included immigration, mass shootings, xenophobia, euthanasia, and freedom & responsibility, among others.
I have had readers not only in the United States, where I am based, but in such varied locations as Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Israel, Germany, Brazil, Ukraine, France, United Kingdom, Poland, Japan, and Palestine, among many others. While I know that the Internet is worldwide, I am consistently blown away to the interest in my blog from persons around the world. To all of you who have read this blog, I say thank you so very much and please keep coming back. If you like this, please spread the word. We all have great thoughts; these are just mine.
The traditional gift for a first anniversary is paper, just as silver is for a twenty-fifth anniversary and gold is for a fiftieth anniversary. The modern gift for a first anniversary is clocks. Clocks, of course, relate to time. Time is many things to many people. To some (i.e. a scientist or, perhaps, a philosopher), it is simply a construct, not an actual reality. To others (i.e. a child waiting for summer vacation or wanting to be older), it doesn't go fast enough. To others still (i.e. that same child at the end of summer vacation, someone who is older in years, a parent watching a child grow up), it goes too quickly. I have experienced time as going both too quickly and too slowly...at different times, of course.
Having passed the half-century mark last year, I have found myself seeing time in an additional way. If you noticed in the right-hand column of this blog, as well as on my profile page, my description reads, "I am a full-time student in the course of Continuing Education at the School of Life." I would add to that, that time is my class period. Just as someone can learn something in a thirty-, forty-, or sixty-minute class, "time" is the umbrella term to describe the class period at the "School of Life".
In my first ten years, I knew a lot, at least according to my parents, but I had more to learn. At twenty years, what I learned increased exponentially from ten years, but the learning continued. The same can be said for my third and forth decades in comparison to decades past. I have been enjoying the learning continuing in my fifth decade, and look forward with great anticipation to what the future holds, what I will learn in the passing of time.
One of the greatest lessons I learned can be summed up in words of first century A.D. Roman philosopher and naturalist Pliny the Elder: "No one is wise at all times." Oh, how true!
I have also learned another great lesson that the knowledge I have gained over time is not a trophy to wave around or a staff with which I should stick people. In addition to meeting individuals who were more intelligent or less intelligent than I thought they were, I have learned that knowledge, like most things, has its time and place. The wisdom is to strike that balance between under-utilizing yourself and overwhelming others.
Time can also be a hindrance...not in terms of it going too slowly or too quickly, but in terms of personal growth and moving forward in life. This is most commonly described as being stuck in the past or living in the past. To those individuals, such phrases as What's done is done and The past is past are appropriate encouragements, if not always well-received, to moving forward in life. You cannot repeat the past (that is, to relive it over again), except to replicate it in the present...and that is just a repetition, not an initial occurrence.
Life itself is far more complex, of course, but we have examples all around us about moving on and the passing of time. Your teacher covers a section of a textbook for, say, a week. The test on that material is today. You are being tested in the present on what you learned in the past. The first time you shop at a new food store, you find where the dairy section and produce section are in that first trip. The next time you go, you know where they are. You are able to go to those sections without trying to find them today because of what you learned in your last visit.
"The past is prologue" is a famous line from William Shakespeare's play 'The Tempest'. Like the prologue of a book, what has been leads into what is and what will be. The passage from the play (Act II, Scene I) is spoken by Antonio, Prospero's brother, and reads:
She that is queen of Tunis; she that dwells
Ten leagues beyond man's life; she that from Naples
Can have no note, unless the sun were post --
The man i' the moon's too slow -- till new-born chins
Be rough and razorable; she that -- from whom?
We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.
It is wise to not get caught up or, perhaps more so, anchored in any period of time in your life. We live in the present, yes, so we have to be in the moment, but we cannot wish for things to stay the same forever if we like how things are; they won't stay the same. We cannot become anchored in the past, for we will never grow as individuals. We cannot even get anchored in the future -- and I'm not talking about simply making future plans or putting money away for retirement -- for we will not always allow ourselves to learn what we will need to know.
At the "School of Life", the past teaches the present; the present is the past's pupil. You live out now from what you learned then. The future is the present's pupil -- the present will, at that point, be the past, of course -- and you will live out then from what you learn now. Learn everything in its due time. Life live in its due time. Time will pass in its due time.
Terry
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