Prisha Khimavat

This is part of a writing challenge. Click here to read more about it.

In reminiscence of the past,

In awe of the present,

In anticipation of the future.

Or rather

The past forgotten

The present un-lived

The future feared.

The nature of time

A line so fine

An awaited moment

Flies on by

Present for a second,

Long past the next.

Why do I sit and regret

A past that I cannot change?

Why do I try and hold on to

A present that never stays?

Why am I sat here waiting

For a tomorrow that will never come?

Why?

So then here lies the question,

Perhaps centuries old

Reminiscence, Presence, Suspense

Which one should really take the gold?

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I suppose there are many ways to look at the concept time, and how one is supposed to experience each facet of it. They say to reminisce but not regret, to experience but not capture it, to prepare for but not fear. Those are high demands. It’s difficult to do any of those things.

How do you reminisce a part of your life filled with shadows and darkness and pain? Reminisce by nature means to indulge in an enjoyable recollection of the past. How can there be enjoyment, when the past was not pleasant? How does one find joy in times of suffering? How?

Experiencing but not capturing, it difficult in its own right. Why not hold on to something you enjoy? And why suffer through something thats awful? They say all that about building character, but how can one even experience a moment when the best ones fly by so quickly? How?

The last one perhaps is the hardest for me. To prepare for but not fear. How can you be prepared for something if you don’t know whats coming? How do people not find the unknown terrifying? Perhaps that’s a trick of my mind to control all that it cannot, but the fact of the matter is that the future is terrifying, and anyone who says it isn’t at least a little bit, is lying. So, how?

Time is a concept very strange to me. Experienced daily, and yet so foreign. We are never really experiencing any of the three facets because the past is gone and can be recollected but not relived. By the time you are aware of the present, it is no longer the present and has moved on to the past. The future is the one that’s always coming but is never here. Past and Future I perhaps can still comprehend, but it’s the present that confuses me.

Is the present measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, or perhaps seasons? I’m not aware of how to enjoy it if I don’t know what it is. If I decide to make the best of my present and enjoy the situation I’m in, aren’t I already making plans for my future? For instance, I’m watching the sunset and I decide to stay still and just watch the sunset. Isn’t that a plan for the future? Because if so, then when was the present ever experienced?

This is a topic I really don’t understand, and perhaps my thoughts on it were not quite cohesive. However, this was just an explosion of thoughts in my present that transformed into my past with every thought that was thought and every letter that was written. So, with that, here’s something to leave you with:

If time never sits still, how can it ever be present?

~ Prisha Khimavat ~

Durations: 27 minutes and 13 seconds