The cliché of the ‘passage of time’ is probably the most ubiquitous saying to exist.
This passage is one but treacherous and uncertain. It can be filled with the warm light of hope and with its frigid corners filled with fear and hesitation. It leads you astray while tugging right back to the well-worn path as embarked on by your predecessors. It can force you down to your knees, scraped and bruised while slowly and surely ironing out a new path paved just for and by you. All in its own right, to be deigned ‘free will’ or ‘divinely ordained’. The path never failing, always conscious and the bringer of novelty and familiarity, of all things most desired or least expected.
Time is but a cruelly honest lover. It gives no pause, for it moves of its own accord, uncaring of human yearning and will. It wears away at stone, seemingly infallible but still subject to the elements, as with all that belongs to the kingdom of the natural order. It forces us into submission, and yet unrelentingly proves to be a supportive force of change.
The sages often remind us of how everything happens in divine timing. To question timing could be deemed almost blasphemous. Regardless, we have grown to know that with all due respect to preordained things out of our grasp, we choose in accordance to our natural inclination towards autonomy. No doubt, faith and belief in higher powers may not necessarily resonate with everyone, but we are ultimately a faithful bunch. Faith keeps us on our toes, looking ahead to what might come next. Even in the conscious choices we make, we are choosing to believe in the future hopefully being shaped by our past.
We time our choices to reflect what we hope for. If that isn’t faith, what might be? How faithless might one become if we simply chose not to choose? The path might never stop winding and meandering along, but it is impacted by our faith in choice and in accordance to time’s choices.
The well-timed path is but a reflection of our hope for a way out of uncertainty and brokenness we might encounter in so many forms. I choose to believe in the path I toe being an autonomous being that I interact with, in the littlest and largest of ways. I also choose to surrender to what it might present me as obstacles which might be redirection disguised well.
The little pebbles that make one stumble might end up being the butterfly flapping its wings to remind us of uncertainty being our only constant. We learn to lean into not knowing, as the path towards exploration and learning about what we could and do need to know.
