Father Time

First off, I'd like to let you all know that I lied to you. I am not going to talk about ancient Chinese religon today. So there. Got that out of your system? Good.

 

I discovered this afternoon that my adjudicators copies for the Programme Class are due in tomorrow. A brief moment of panic ensued, but it is now in the post. Phewf. Mathew has my syllabus (grr) otherwise I would've checked up on the exact date sooner, but I thought it was a bit furthur away. I probably looked at it and thought June 1st. Ah, that's ages away. No worries. The only problem being that 'ages away' becomes 'tomorrow' remarkably quickly and often without warning. I'm missing Outlook.

 

Shakespeare's Macbeth said "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time; / And all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death."

Macbeth obviously didn't think that time was flying by him, but the sense he gives is of the sheer inexorable weight of time - and that though time changes us all, fundamentally we're the same. Through our weaknesses, by our sins, we will continue 'light fools the way to dusty death'. Individuals shift, change, and are consumed by time, but humanity is strangely impervious to his influence. That's why those who theorised that, given this or that, humans would eventually become perfect unselfish angels, have been proven so dismally wrong. Give it time, they say, and the right circumstances, and it can happen. Ha. Stick that one on a Tui ad. You can have my beer, mate. Yeah right. They use exactly the same reasoning as Darwinian evolutionists. Time + chance = miracle! They misunderstand the function of time. It is not here to change the great things, but the small. Time will kill a pig, but will not transform it into a horse. Time will turn a mans hair white, but won't make him benevolent. It takes outside agents to do that.

In his own realm however, Time reigns supreme. Though men are even now finding ways twist, bend, and otherwise skew time, the Cold Regent merely smiles quietly. He may be manipulated now and again, but the last laugh is his. In the end he will have his due. Perhaps the coins that were once placed on the eyes of the dead to pay the Ferryman would've been put to better use if they'd been offered as a gesture: The windows are broken; the bird is fled. This is the price of Time.