Living
in Eternity
“Time
has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm
or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or
year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring
bells and fire pistols.”
Thomas
Mann
When
you think about it, time is...well, timeless. We exist in a planetary
system, tethered by gravity, that circles a bright star, and the
movement of our planet around that star causes it to turn on an axis.
When the side we live on is exposed to the sun, we call it day, and
when it is turned away from the sun, we call it night. As the planet
shifts on its axis, whichever part of it leans toward the sun has
warmer weather, and when it leans away, colder weather; thus our
seasons change. We humans are the only inhabitants of said planet
that mark these changes by minutes and hours, days and months and years.
I watched “Catless,” the feral cat who resides on my front
porch, as temperatures chilled. She gradually fattened-up by
eating more, and she is content to stay for extended periods in the “cat-house” I've
provided. Other than that, her behavior is consistently oblivious to
the passage of time or the change of season. I, on the other hand,
anguish about it and set out more food, which she steadfastly ignores
if she's not hungry. Last night, I brought her inside and into the
basement, because temperatures were plunging and I couldn't sleep
knowing she was out there. She howled about that, and couldn't wait
to bolt from the door this morning. Catless doesn't worry about time
passing, or weather changing. She trusts her instincts to get her
through.
I
believe Catless lives closer to soul-time than I do. She was born,
she spends her life doing what cats do, at some point her body will
fail, and she will take herself off to die. She seems utterly
unperturbed with the discomfort of this arrangement. She eats when
she's hungry, sleeps when she's tired, whether it's day or night,
summer or winter. She is completely comfortable in her own skin and
free of worry.
I'm
sure there are very good reasons that we have devised a scale to mark
the passage of time, but I think it may cause us more anxiety than
anything else. We use it to evaluate ourselves—“Oh, no! Another
month has passed and I still haven't _____.” You fill in the blank.
We use time to measure our progress toward success or failure. Truth
is, we would be happier, healthier creatures if we were more like
Catless. We live in eternity, and eternity has no sub-categories.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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