酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

Time is one of the greatest of all our obsessions. Why? In many ways, it's a complete paradox. After all, time has no physical basis. We can't feel, smell or touch it. Yet there's almost a sense that we can really experience it: time flies when we have fun and stands still when we get bored. Moreover, we really can't ignore the unrelenting tick of the clock. Regardless of whether it's a business meeting, or a migration of a school of fishes, our world runs on time. We simply can't avoid it.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future?
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

In Burnt Norton, the first of The Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot reflects on the nature of time. What is? What has been? What was? What will be? What is the relationship between the past, the present and the future? What is eternity?

All of the abovementioned questions have gradually become my own obsession, and I simply can’t do away with them. Since my emigration to Canada, I feel I have been caught between two cultures, stuck in a limbo sense of time, which is a sense of experiencing an uncertain present encompassing the nostalgic past and the unforeseeable future at the same time. It is the sense of displacement and estrangement that prompts me to try to cross the boundaries of time and to free myself from the puzzlement of the present through delving into memories of the past and imagination of the future.

Examine for a moment the state of my mind on an ordinary day. My mind receives myriad impressions – past encounters intensely engaging in discussions with my friends, present activities in doing domestic chores, and perpetual fantasies in pre-planning my seemingly promising future. From all directions of time past, present and future they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms, and as they fall, they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Sunday, making no difference between weekdays and weekends.

Time, though it makes flowers bloom and fade with amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon my mind; moreover, my mind works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it is immersed in the dull moment, may be stretched to a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be represented on the timepiece of my mind by the split of a second regardless of the boundaries of time. If you ask me what time is, I really don’t know how to answer you. Clock time means no difference to me because I’m lost to the time of memory and imagination.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Time is one of the greatest of all our obsessions. Why? In many ways, it's a complete paradox. After all, time has no physical basis. We can't feel, smell or touch it. Yet there's almost a sense that we can really experience it: time flies when we have fun and stands still when we get bored. Moreover, we really can't ignore the unrelenting tick of the clock. Regardless of whether it's a business meeting, or a migration of a school of fishes, our world runs on time. We simply can't avoid it.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future?
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

In Burnt Norton, the first of The Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot reflects on the nature of time. What is? What has been? What was? What will be? What is the relationship between the past, the present and the future? What is eternity?

All of the abovementioned questions have gradually become my own obsession, and I simply can’t do away with them. Since my emigration to Canada, I feel I have been caught between two cultures, stuck in a limbo sense of time, which is a sense of experiencing an uncertain present encompassing the nostalgic past and the unforeseeable future at the same time. It is the sense of displacement and estrangement that prompts me to try to cross the boundaries of time and to free myself from the puzzlement of the present through delving into memories of the past and imagination of the future.

Examine for a moment the state of my mind on an ordinary day. My mind receives myriad impressions – past encounters intensely engaging in discussions with my friends, present activities in doing domestic chores, and perpetual fantasies in pre-planning my seemingly promising future. From all directions of time past, present and future they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms, and as they fall, they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Sunday, making no difference between weekdays and weekends.

Time, though it makes flowers bloom and fade with amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon my mind; moreover, my mind works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it is immersed in the dull moment, may be stretched to a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be represented on the timepiece of my mind by the split of a second regardless of the boundaries of time. If you ask me what time is, I really don’t know how to answer you. Clock time means no difference to me because I’m lost to the time of memory and imagination.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[Lake]

“时间就是生命。”

cheers,

[[Lake]]

“时间就是生命。”

cheers,

[星子]

Time is moment,
Time is breathing,
then time is life.
_________________

[[ANNA]]

Time is moment,
Time is breathing,
then time is life.
_________________

[ericcoliu]

Thanks for your comment.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Thanks for your comment.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

What is time, actually? Who can readily and briefly explain this? We understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by others.

In his groundbreaking work, Confessions, St. Augustine claims:

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asked, I know not: yet I say boldly that I know, that if nothing passed away, time past were not; and if nothing were coming, a time to come were not; and if nothing were, time present were not."

Time is the subject of Book XI of Confessions, in which St. Augustine explores the relationship between God's timelessness and his creation's experience of time. In his view based on Christian theology, God is “outside of time;” St. Augustine declares, “Time itself being part of God’s creation, there was simply no before.” God has no business with time, and in his eyes all time is present as one unified moment, which is called eternal now in Christian theological terms. Human beings as God’s creation, however, experience time, which St. Augustine views as a soul-wrenching quality. Although experiencing the passage of time, he suggests that time may be a kind of ‘distension,” a stretching of the soul, which is a sign of distance from God – creation has fallen away from God’s eternality into successive time.

Not every Christian theologian agrees with St. Augustine about his conception of time. Paul Tillich, generally considered one of the 2oth century's outstanding and influential thinkers, claims that it is our estrangement and guilt which are the impediments keeping us from reaching eternal life “here and now.” In the 11th chapter of his influential work entitled The Eternal Now, he argues:

The mystery is that we have a present; and even more, that we have our future also because we anticipate it in the present; and that we have our past also, because we remember it in the present. In the present our future and our past are ours.

Maybe in our effort remembering of and participating in “life here and now”, we can do away with the baffling question -- what time is.

By the way, it’s 6:20 pm at the time of finishing this piece of writing.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

What is time, actually? Who can readily and briefly explain this? We understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by others.

In his groundbreaking work, Confessions, St. Augustine claims:

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asked, I know not: yet I say boldly that I know, that if nothing passed away, time past were not; and if nothing were coming, a time to come were not; and if nothing were, time present were not."

Time is the subject of Book XI of Confessions, in which St. Augustine explores the relationship between God's timelessness and his creation's experience of time. In his view based on Christian theology, God is “outside of time;” St. Augustine declares, “Time itself being part of God’s creation, there was simply no before.” God has no business with time, and in his eyes all time is present as one unified moment, which is called eternal now in Christian theological terms. Human beings as God’s creation, however, experience time, which St. Augustine views as a soul-wrenching quality. Although experiencing the passage of time, he suggests that time may be a kind of ‘distension,” a stretching of the soul, which is a sign of distance from God – creation has fallen away from God’s eternality into successive time.

Not every Christian theologian agrees with St. Augustine about his conception of time. Paul Tillich, generally considered one of the 2oth century's outstanding and influential thinkers, claims that it is our estrangement and guilt which are the impediments keeping us from reaching eternal life “here and now.” In the 11th chapter of his influential work entitled The Eternal Now, he argues:

The mystery is that we have a present; and even more, that we have our future also because we anticipate it in the present; and that we have our past also, because we remember it in the present. In the present our future and our past are ours.

Maybe in our effort remembering of and participating in “life here and now”, we can do away with the baffling question -- what time is.

By the way, it’s 6:20 pm at the time of finishing this piece of writing.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

Time is
The home in which we were born
The terrain around which we wander
The school in which we are educated
The fire in which we burn
Then, we become the fire
Finally, the ashes of our memories
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Time is
The home in which we were born
The terrain around which we wander
The school in which we are educated
The fire in which we burn
Then, we become the fire
Finally, the ashes of our memories
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul