Mark Gowan's Blog, page 12

Some More Time

Time is a funny thing. It keeps moving. Often without us noticing it. Some time is slow and some time speeds past us. every once in a while we feel the breeze of time as it whisks by us and we turn to look; in the past. We are surprised but we shouldn’t be. Time is the only consistent idea.

Time shows itself in so many ways. A wrinkle here, a wall in need of paint, age. But it never changes. Time is the face of god. But even gods must bow to time. It holds for no one and knows no boundaries. There is no world for the amount of time that has passed nor for the amount of time that will be. We can only look up, look back and look forward. We can only watch it pass.

The irony of time is clear: only it is timeless.

And so if we can at all keep any of this in our minds we could look at the world differently, more reverently perhaps. When we believe we have time to spare we might remember that we, unlike time, are not timeless. It might behoove us to remember that time is only a commodity to us. We might change our decisions to reconcile our use of time with the less, much less valuable, the less virtuous, the less worthy. We might even look up at the morning sky and hear nature and silence and thank ourselves for taking those few seconds to do so.

Time is not ours to keep, but only borrow. And for this reason and many more we can realize that time is priceless, that thing that we measure out so carelessly.

Time is an illusion, but it is the only meaningful one that we have.

Masters of Life

Walking with two dogs through a beautiful place. I never wonder where they are or if they’ll run away. The always make sure I am close at hand. I like to watch them run up and down the small hills that roll throughout this wonderful place. It fits them. They never have any worries and they always find new things to explore. They’re happy down in the valleys or on the pointy, tops of the sandy dunes.

Their lives are simple. The chase dreams and illusions and spend their time with sand and cold air in their fur. they have no grand plans or any purpose other than to enjoy my company and this place; this magical place. They have no need for all the things that fill my head.

I think. I realize that I do not have need for all the things in my head. That’s why I like this place, this magical place. The dogs remind me that this place is important, and it should be important. As I walk I watch them, with their tongues hanging out and their eyes full of glory and happiness. I watch them and I realize that I am a student of these masters of life. And they, they are students of this place. This magical place.

Time

Time is that thing that we all believe we have. We give time away freely until we cannot. Then, it stands still. Often it’s when small-talk starts; that empty noise that happens so often when there is really nothing to say. It is the fast food version of conversation. Replies are a strain because there is no substance, no subject to the noise. A two-minute meaningless meet-up stretched to a full day of coffee just to stay upright.

This is all true and yes it is painful to watch our time slither away empty handed. But lest we forget; sometimes talk is not about conversation. Sometimes it is about the people that we are with. We may not like them but that doesn’t matter either. One day they will be gone. Time will move on. And then we can bide our time and be alone in our thoughts of those people we once knew. We will realize that we missed an opportunity to make time our own.

It is easy to forget, time. It is our own and no one else’s. It is easy to forget that time is an empty vessel that travels alongside us, always moving and always running to and from us as we stare, empty-eyed into empty eyes and empty minds.

Hatred

Hatred takes work. it takes time and energy and patience as well as planning. It is not an easy thing to keep up over time. It is not as easy as it is to hate. So, perhaps we must simply “dislike”? Perhaps. But then the work simply becomes more specific. It is less broad and comes with questions: what degree of “dislike”? Is there a chance for forgiveness? It all becomes so complicated.

“There is a hill I will die on…” we tell ourselves. There is “a point of no return…” we say. And so we think to ourselves what that hill might be, or where that point is. Perhaps we pour ourselves a cup of coffee and ponder these questions. And times passes. There is no clear answer but now time invested time and energy. We still don’t like the person we wanted to hate but we’ve found that hatred burns hot and quick and the embers of dislike become cool.

Eventually we find that we don’t have to do anything. We simply have to be honest, both with ourselves and the person we wanted to hate, or at the very least dislike. But we can do these things in silence or even better, disregard. The best we have is apathy. Whatever takes the least amount of our time and energy and effort. If the hill or the point is truly there then why spend more time than needed getting to them. Let them sit in peace.

Our time is priceless and there is only so much energy. Why waste it on those that aren’t worth the effort?! Be honest. Be courteous, but be miserly with time and energy. Those are really the only things we have.

Paradise Lost

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Entropy

Entropy is a one-way street

Think about entropy seriously. Consider what it means and try to press yourself to understand the implications. It is important. It is the measure by which everything else is judged.

There is a god and it is entropy. but unlike the deistic myth, entropy does not wish to be nor does it need to be worshiped. Entropy is a cold fact. It is blind not because it cannot see but because that is its natural state. Darkness, endless, unconscious, void of all those things we have, and will lose.

Nothing we do; nothing we say or think, or feel, or believe, or wish, or want, or pray for, or understand, or beg for will change this. We are powerless and it is infinitely powerful. Entropy is unequivocal; it is unbending, and it is inevitable.

It is the meaningless driver of all things it knows nothing of. It is a cold fact that cares not to be understood. we must bow down to it but we can do it with a smile if we so choose.

Bow to no king or flag or god and accept that fate is a natural illusion.

Empathy

What is empathy but a weakness and a strength. It is a both powerless and powerful. It can stop a tank and is unable to change the violence of humanity. It is a virtue and a weapon. It is learned and intuitive. It can change you for the better and for the worse.

Empathy is a balancing act. An unempathetic animal is one that is lost. An unempathetic human animal is one that is ignorant. You cannot lose yourself in empathy nor dismiss it as unworthy. But where does empathy get its strength? Perhaps it is from the same spring as wisdom.

It is the wise man that looks mortality in the eye and realizes that nothing lasts. It is the wise man that guages respect for and of others carefully. It is the wise man that is secure and confident enough to care for others that deserve it and to know how to tell the difference.

Empathy is a worthy gift and a priceless attribute. And it must be given and received with care. it is strange that every animal other than the human one, the only one capable of the level of empathy that our intelligence gives us, deserves unlimited empathy and we must deserve it or it becomes a weakness.

Expertise

Studies have been done on expertise and one aspect is that expertise takes at least ten thousand hours in a specific field. But it takes more than that. It takes curiosity. It takes passion, a longing for that knowledge, a clear goal and the ability and willingness to learn.

Expertise takes a lifetime of ups and downs, failure, tears, frustration, lack of confidence and over confidence. It takes the fortitude to persevere. It takes a conscious effort, a clarity of mind to dismiss common and popular opinions of others that are not experts.

To be an expert takes the ability to recognize others that might be experts and to learn from them. It takes the decision to work towards that clear goal you have set in mind regularly and to pay prices no matter the cost in order to understand and delve deeper into that understanding.

You might ask yourself if you are an expert in any field. You might be but it is not for you to say. An expert lives with the knowledge of ignorance and the ignorance of knowledge.

Numb

Why bother being good at anything? Why desire integrity with an onslaught of lies and smiles? Why want to make the world a better place when the world seems to want to be worse? Why knowledge when it is ignorance that reigns?

I don’t know the answer to these questions except that i doesn’t make sense to blind yourself simply because you live in an un-seeing world. It doesn’t make sense to fuel a machine built to suck the life out of you.

Numbness is not comfort. The loss of hope is not happiness.

Societies do not progress, individuals do. People have never done anything worthwhile. Some one has. The masses are a product; the inventor is an artist. The capitalist is a parasite; the engineer a drone, and the musician a drowning man.

In the end it doesn’t matter. But what we forget is that the end doesn’t matter. It is life, a good life, that is important.

To try to do good, to produce beauty is progress. All else is a cheap trinket in a dirty convenient store.

Good Enough

This is dedicated to the feigned skepticism of those that fear happiness and its cost, who have taken the low road and call it good enough.

The judgement of others hurts. The off-handed remarks, the silent look and lack of questions and curiosity. The worlds said and unsaid. The forgone conclusions that hang in the air. But what is most irksome is that these conclusions are ignorant and ill-informed.

It is in the traditional that [these] attributes are found. Those that see the world through the lens of the past, through their own biases. Sometimes it is from those you love and care for, your parents, your spouse. sometimes from people whom you dislike or don’t know.

Sometimes it is yourself. do your own beliefs color you? Do they remind you of something bothersome? Should you fight? For what is a dream without doubt?

What is independence without ridicule?

How much is enough? Be yourself and the world will look away because it will have lost you to your own happiness.

Ignorance is a heavy burden to bear, but regret is a chain that binds you to it.