Time

Time seems to have move on very fast. It was as if yesterday we Muslim had the fasting month of Ramadan and now again its very close to Ramadan. And after 1 month it will the celebration of Eid. And still before you know it, it will be the end of 2004 and going into 2005. And yet for most of us the elderly, we still feel young and energetic. Not realising of course that our hair on top is getting thinner and grayer, and our neck line shows mark of skin folding. Our eyes showing crows feet and our middle.......bulging mostly. And we walk a bit slower than before and our knees and legs begin to ache when we stand for a long time. To those of us who are lucky enough, these signs will not show overnight but to others they will show every time you look at yourself in the mirror. There is nothing much that one can do about that. For the men its not really that bad but for the women I suppose it is worse.. In the West (and some in the East as well) they would go for the face lifts and skin stretching, but how many lifts can one do and how much stretching can one have. They will still show somehow to searching eyes.

A time of growing old, a time when one have to be at peace with ones self. I am not sure about the other races and those of other religions, but for the Malays and those who are Muslims this is the time when one would (or should) visit the mosques more often, prepare oneself for the next world. How many more years can you live in this world? I am not just reminding that to anyone but actually and should be targeted to me. I had had a good life, I must thank God for that, and it is only at this time of my life that I must show and demonstrate my gratitude to God. Just follow what He says, and hoping that He will be pleased with me and put me in the ‘right place ‘over there.

Time moves on, weather changes. I was in KL last week and it was stormy and raining almost every evening then,. Now I am in Kuantan, about 200 km away, and it is raining, the storm is not mush to be seen but the rain can be quite heavy and persisting. Only distant thunder can be heard. Its a different scenario altogether, peace, cool and quieter.

There are times in ones life when one can reflect on what one had done. I have not done so, but there are times when I think about my past and what the future will hold for me for the next few more years (hopefully) whilst and if I am still alive. What will I do? What can I contribute? What will people contribute to me? How do I survive the everyday living? Will I be of any use to the society at my age? Will I be bothering people when I am older and helpless? I know that I have done whatever I could do for myself and society while I was young and climbing up my career ladder. But did I do enough? Was my contribution recognised? Were the other people’s contribution recognised? By others and by me? I am just a small twig in a big society tree, did my twig help in the society’s overall well being? Many questions but no answer.

The generations before me have now been long gone. I remember them. But how many people remember them? If they do what do they do to ensure that they are not forgotten? But what is the use of remembering them anyway? Again questions, questions, questions!. And the generations after this, will they ever learn from the mistakes of the past generations? Or will they still be experimenting with what the generations before them have been doing. But in my mind I know that the generations after me will be a very different generation altogether. Technology has advanced so fast that even the present generation (I mean the older present generations) is not able to grasp the technological changes that affect their present lifes. Its a tug of war, the newer generation is trying to do things ‘their way’ where as the present older generations is telling them that ‘do not make the same mistakes that we made’. Who is right? I cannot tell. I can see all that, I can see the present generation is rebelling on the old and tested methods of the older generation, and yet the older generation is trying to hold back. Perhaps this is not so obvious in the Western society but in the Eastern society, its a real aching situations.
Time has changed. Peoples have changed Food have changed, maybe not that obvious but still there is a marked changed. You can see the difference from what we eat yesterday as compared to today. Today its all fast, fast, fast, nobody has the time to wait. This is in line with the emergence of the American fast food business which help a lot in accommodating this fast, fast, fast needs of the present. Good or bad is not for me to argue. But it serves the purpose, good quality they say nowadays.

Time has seen the advance in communication. Thing that we never thought of even 10 years ago are such as Internet and cell phones. Anyone reading this can imagine that I would not even be able to write this long winded write-up without the computer and without the ‘zap’ by Internet to a central processing place where anyone who is interested can read what I write. Who thoughts about the advance of hand phones? Now one would feel rather naked if one does not carry a hand phone. My apologies to those who do not like hand phones, or who do not carry hand phones and to those areas where hand phone communication is not available. But by modern standard such cases can be considered backward. Actually I am rather backward myself because even though I carry a hand phone, I have it on silent mode. I cannot bear to hear a hand phone ringing, I thing such cases are considered as antisocial.
What more can I say, everything is different now from what it was 10 years ago. Time has seen to that. Time progresses fast and at the same time we have progressed fast. Forget about the exploration to outer space; we have not even yet explored the depth of the oceans. And we have not even explored the human body to the full to cure all diseases and we have not even explored the human mind, the most powerful weapon that a human being has.

What is time in reality?. It just grows by and you cannot even see it passing you. Is this the big bang? And you will never get it back, it goes on and on and on and on and nobody can stop it. Its infinite and its eternity, which is first? I do not know really. You tell time by looking at the clock. In those days people watch time by looking at the shadows of the sun where there is the sun and by the nature around you if they do not see the sun. But watching time will not get you anywhere, it does not wait for you, it does not even know that you exist. You know that it exists but what can you do about it?

Its interesting though that we try to measure time up to a nano second. So what? Of what use really that nano second is?. Even in breathing we take nearly one second (or fraction of a second as there are 72 heart beats to a minute normally). And when we stop breathing, even a millionth of a nano second is of no use to us. We rot. And can we also stop that?

Time is a flux, its no ghost. A ghost may not even exist but time is always there. And the flux is in constant change, and changing and changing. So it goes on and on and on and on.................................................and we just goes on with it without even be able to lift a finger to control it. So............................................ ......................................................................

To shout back, e-mail: mylias@tm.net.my