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- Try to imagine a life without timekeeping.
- You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie.
- Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays.
- Man alone measures time.
- Man alone chimes the hour.
- And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures.
- A fear of time running out.
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- Consider the word “time.”
- We use so many phrases with it. Pass time. Waste time. Kill time. Lose time.
- In good time. About time. Take your time. Save time.
- A long time. Right on time. Out of time. Mind the time. Be on time. Spare time. Keep time. Stall for time.
- There are as many expressions with “time” as there are minutes in a day.
- But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting.
- Then Dor began.
- And everything changed.
- The lust for power is a combustible thing.
- “Man rarely knows his own power,” the old man said.
- “Soon man will count all his days, and then smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still—until the counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”
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- “What difference could two people make?”
- “You were one person,” the old man said. “And you changed the world.”
- Sometimes, when you are not getting the love you want, giving makes you think you will.
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- “Yes! I am so happy.”
- The man tilted his head. “Then why are you so sad?”
- He wondered how it was fair that your dying should depend so much on when you were born.
- Some of them she had seen for four years without exchanging a word. But that was how high school worked; it issued a verdict and you behaved accordingly.
- Children so rarely ask to reverse time. Mostly they are in a hurry.
- “We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.”
- But the complexity of their worlds was baffling. Dor came from a time before the written word, a time when if you wished to speak with someone, you walked to see them. This time was different. The tools of this era—phones, computers—enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all they accomplished, they were never at peace. They constantly checked their devices to see what time it was—the very thing Dor had tried to determine once with a stick, a stone, and a shadow.
- A heart weighs more when it splits in two; it crashes in the chest like a broken plane.
- Common sense would have told Sarah to steer clear of Ethan’s waters. But common sense has no place in first love and never has.
- Didn't people call New Year’s the loneliest night on the calendar? She took comfort in knowing somewhere on the planet, someone might be as miserable as she was.
- And when hope is gone, time is punishment.
- It is never too late or too soon, the old man had said. It is when it is supposed to be.
- When we are most alone is when we embrace another’s loneliness.
- But hurting ourselves to inflict pain on others is just another cry to be loved.
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- “Just tell me …” Her voice cracked. “When does it stop hurting?”
- “Sometimes never.”
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- “You had many more years,” he said.
- “I didn’t want them.”
- “But they wanted you. Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be an answer to your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future.”
- “What’s that?”
- “Hope.”
- “Ends are for yesterdays, not tomorrows.”
- “Do you understand now?” he asked. “With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have.”
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- “There is a reason God limits our days.”
- “Why?”
- “To make each one precious.”
- “I lived,” Dor said, “but I was not alive.”
- There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between sunrises was gone.
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- He lowered his hand from Victor’s eyes. “When you are measuring life, you are not living it. I know.”
- He looked down. “I was the first to do it.”
- But fates are connected in ways we don’t understand.
oct 27 2013 ∞
oct 28 2013 +
oct 28 2013 +