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Broken Time
When there is a scarcity of a resource, its value increases in proportion to how much of a necessity people view it. This places an economic, personal, and by proxy a spiritual value on items. Is it possible that on the flip side, an abundance of a resource, could also cause an item’s value to increase on the economic, personal, and spiritual side? I suppose it comes down to the individual, and for me, time has become a precious resource that bends only with space and never for any human.
Over the last few years, I have had an abundance of ‘free time’ to myself. Specifically, in the last year, give or take a few months, there has been a gluttonous amount of free time given to me. My days have fallen in to a sort of freedom that I am not used to with a routine I should abandon and restructure. However, if I do not understand why it is as it is, then there is no way I can make it be what I want it to be.
I like change. I like forced change, it takes the responsibility off of me. Having to do something to live up to someone else’s expectations is easier than doing something to live up to my own. Its not really about responsibility, its about the notion of true freedom- to do what you want, when you want, how you want. Having that is truly scary because… well, what about all the structure I grew up with? The railroad track laid out before me that I just needed to chug along? Now, I am the one that must lay the track and travel it? How?
But in time, things are revealed to us, no? The ‘I should have done’s hang over my memories with the gleeful gaze of a puppeteer putting on a local show. Is it because I hold my evolving expectations against a past me that was not fit with the tools to meet them? Or is it because I feel this present I should be a better person than the one in the present that just passed? If every decision I make will be met with disdain from a later me, how can I, as the present me, trust the future me to do… well, anything? Is there enough time in the world to even figure out if that logic is broken? If so, is there enough time to fix it?
I ‘spose I just feel that I have a mixed bag of memories stored up. Sometimes I am stuck in those times in new jersey when I just laid on the floor and dreamt of a better place. Sometimes I am jaunted back to the fun times I had in college. Sometimes I find myself with people at places, who’s faces I just don’t remember but the feeling still runs deep. Sometimes I wonder if my memories are even real or if time distorts hindsight just as equally as it heals it. Perhaps that is just a limitation of the human brain.
Perhaps the most lightly gripped heart wrencher is that I have wasted so much time. While there is so much to do, so much to learn, so many memories to make- I have simply went with the structured plan. The freedom is there, with its risks and rewards, and I’m just a traveler on a paved road. The more recent bad memories of adulthood weigh heavy on me. When I finally come to terms with them, truly come to terms with them, that I’ll be able to move forward. Until then, the frozen clock of a shelled dreamer will always tell the wrong time twice a day.
Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart
