There is a quote by Benjamin Franklin that is also featured in Daniel Ceasar's song (among many other things I am sure) Death and Taxes which caught my attention immediately and hasn't let my conscious rest since. It goes likes this, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
I thought the claim was brilliant at first because it's quite true and we don't really think about the things that are certain, so it came as a pleasant shock. Especially the death portion. It seems like every day it's becoming more and more of a social taboo to speak about it. I find that more deafening than anything. It's the one thing the future promises, not to be that person who is chewing way too obnoxiously, but why should we ignore it so heavily? Well, because who wants to talk about our inevitability?
Then again, I'm not sure casually bringing up death in a conversation would be advisable. It's sort of like the whole "my life is perfect and everything you see is actually what's happening" over social media. No one wants to air out their dirty laundry on Instagram or tweet about how miserable thoughts can be in the wee hours of the night. Although the ones who do are shunned and often times seen as attention seekers or over dramatic. There is something about this generation being obsessed with wanting to show the world their every move. It's like if you don't post a video or photo then did it really happen? Good news, ladies and gentleman of the 21st century! Yes, yes it did indeed happen! I plea guilty to the above statement, but I'm acknowledging it which is the first step in anything. Once I took a closer look at the quote I realized that there is one little thing that needed to be tacked on to the end and it's time.
There is something spectacular about the concept of time. I think this is because everyone knows exactly what it is, but it can't be controlled. Humans have been manipulating objects and people to get ahead in life as long as the sky has been blue and the devastating reality of how close Spongebob was to being called SpongeBoy. This is shown repeatedly over the course of history. We know empires come crumbling down and new faces come to power, etc. We manipulate time too. Although we cannot control time, we can manage it (shoutout to the kids trying, just keep swimming) and it can also slip right through our fingers. Time controls us, it just depends on how you let it. For some, they are prisoners and others don't notice it at all. I'm not sure yet, but I think the goal is to be somewhere in between.
I don't think the world will ever see one thing as simultaneously simplistic and complex as time is. We can look at a watch and tell the time, which also confirms our mere existence. Not to say that our existence is insignificant in any way, but to time it really is because either way it will go on. However, without time I'm afraid gravity might fail and we'd all be floating in an abyss.
Time is proof that the world owes us nothing and that we owe the world every fiber of our being. We live on an earth that when in one dimension, is the shape of our lives; a clock on a wall or a watch on a wrist. If your source of time comes from something of a different shape like a rectangle for example, deepest apologies. Sometimes I can be funny. Regardless of where you get it, it's an overlooked reminder that we are always ticking.
