7 Reasons That Time Is The Enemy

Posted on July 14, 2011 in Top Posts | 2 comments

I’ve just realised something.  Something important.  Something life-altering.  Something that, though I was vaguely aware that it was so, I’d never really considered before.  I’ve just realised who the enemy is and it’s not even the French!  It’s that odious bastard time.  Here are seven reasons why.

1.  Time Causes You To Sacrifice Things You Hold Dear.  Time – the scoundrel – causes you to miss many things that you dearly love to do.  Haven’t played your guitar for a while, visited that spa or baked that cake?  No?  It’s because there isn’t time.  You probably thought there was time – that you could fit it in – but time deserted you when you needed it most.   And then time forced you to make the tricky decision about what to sacrifice because of your lack of it.  Time has run out on you and made you the bad guy.  If you find yourself having to make the choice to spend more of your time doing the washing up or the hoovering rather than spending your time doing what you really want to be doing, it’s time’s fault.

2.  Time Forces You To Compromise.  Time continually places us in compromising positions.  Because of time, everything becomes a compromise:  Should you do something quickly or do something well?  Should you diligently hone your craft and produce excellence or just botch things in a hurried manner for a quick result?  Time forces you to make compromises in every area of your life when you’d probably rather not.  Time forces you to compromise every damned…er…time.

3.  Time Makes Your Life Needlessly Difficult.  We strive to be on time; not early nor late, because what is prized in our society is punctuality; being on time.  This means that how you are seen in the eyes of your peers – your social standing – is held in the fickle fingers of fate.  In an ideal world, it’s not difficult to be punctual, but we don’t live in an ideal world.  Every puncture, every train breakdown, every tube strike, in fact, every little incident and accident that we encounter on the way to wherever it is we’re going could potentially make us late, which will affect how we’re judged by our peers; “He’s always late”, people will whisper, “she’s a terrible timekeeper”.  Time sets you difficult to attain targets then rewards your inevitable failure with opprobrium.

4.  It’s Never The Right Time.  No matter what age you are, it’s never the right time.  When you’re young, it’s never playtime, it’s always bathtime or bedtime or time to go to school.  When you have kids of your own, it’s never bathtime or bedtime, it’s always sodding playtime and it’s never time to go home.  Then when you’re old it’s always bloody bedtime and you’re in a home.  It’s never the right time.

5.  Time Is Bad For Us.  Time is attacking you and I at this very moment.  It’s doing all sorts of vile things to us: It’s turning us grey; it’s making us wrinkly; it’s making some bits of us bigger and some bits of us smaller; it’s making bits of us fall out and adding extra bits where there weren’t bits before; bits that we didn’t need; bits that didn’t want; bits that we’re going to have to spend even more time removing.  Time is making the inside of your ears hairy right now for no earthly reason other than to mock you.

6.  Time Will Kill You.  Humans are fragile creatures and there are many dangerous things that we might encounter during the course of our lives: War, famine, pestilence, irate husbands, startled horses, out of control dirigibles, rogue hippopotami, a landslide, a flood, a furious baboon; there are all manner of things that can kill us.  But one thing is certain, if, against all the odds, we survive all of those things then time will kill us.  Time kills more people than all of the armies of the world combined.  Time kills more people than every monstrous dictator that’s ever committed an act of genocide.  Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Leopold of Belgium and Adolf Hitler were lightweights when compared with time.  Time is a mass murderer.  Time should be in a cell in The Hague.  For the rest of time.

7.  Time Is Addictive.  Time, in the manner of an opiate, has us hooked.  For after it’s turned us grey, caused us to sacrifice many of the things that we hold dear, turned our lives into a frustrating series of compromises, punished us for every little mishap that was outside our control, it still holds us in its thrall.  Like irresolute crack whores we go running back to it, because we’re compelled to; we’re addicted to time.  We can’t get enough of it.  We can never have enough time.  What every last one of us wants is more time.  Time is our enemy, yet we can’t live without it.

As you can plainly see, time is an insidious and diabolically cruel outrage that humankind should wage war against.  I’d lead the charge myself, but sadly, I don’t have the time.