Time

Time

by Craig Willms

One of the greatest songs I know is a number called "Time" by Pink Floyd. A cut from their classic album Dark Side of the Moon. Funny, these guys were young men when they wrote it, what did they know about the passing of time? Well, they sensed where things were going, and they got it right. When I read through the lyrics now, 50 years after they were penned, they ring true to me, now more than ever.

Time by Pink Floyd/Gilmour and Wright

    Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

Fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way.

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

    Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.

And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

     Ahhhh...

    (Oooh ahhhh)

    So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again.

The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

    Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time.

Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way

The time is gone, the song is over

Thought I'd something more to say.

The two lines that always jumped out at me were...The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older - and... Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way - These lyrics have so much meaning and wisdom in their simplicity.  

The sun is the same in a relative way... Imagine a man looking up at the sun 1000 years ago. He sees the sun exactly as you do. He feels the warmth, and the pressure of the light and accurately predicts where the sun will be a few hours from now and where it will be tomorrow morning. His sun is consistent. As is yours. It's the same. Some things are timeless. 

Yet time marches on.

He wakes up one day and half his life has passed him by. What happened, or actually, how did this happen? This is something I think we can all relate to. Suddenly you realize after all your work, all your plodding along and all your caring about every minute detail of your life it's all seemingly for naught. You are no closer to understanding or fulfillment than you were as a child. Except now there is so much less time in front of you. 

Now that you're older you expected to have achieved a mature wisdom, and you have to a certain degree, but it's so small and incomplete. For some reason you think you're the only one who doesn't get it, but you're not alone. No one has this thing figured out. Innately we know it will never click for us; we are destined leave this world as blind as when we came into it. There is acceptance, there is peace, but it's unsatisfying. So, you hang on in quiet desperation, because that's what people do. Then you die.

Still, time marches on.

After we're gone life goes on, time marches on, relentlessly so. No one can stop it. Is there a lesson to be drawn, is there a point to all this? If there is, it's so personal, no one can adequately explain it to another. Short of just advising you to be aware, keep your eyes open and take it all in as best you can, there's nothing more to say...