Time by Will Stanton

“This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.”

So went Gollum’s riddle to Bilbo.  Of course, the answer is “Time.”  Everything falls prey to time; nothing lasts.  And, this includes humankind.  Our lives are but a mere speck in contrast to, for example, geological time, although our lives usually are longer than the fleeting moment allotted to a butterfly.

We usually have no inkling as to how long our lives will be.  I always have felt uncomfortable with the possibility that I may not have used my time so productively as I might have, that I may have accomplished more to make me truly worthy of this gift of time.  Ironically, I currently spend a lot of time on these Story-Time presentations.

In Thomas Mann’s acclaimed novella “Death in Venice,” the protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach is shocked by a sudden realization of mortality when he suffers a heart attack.  Afterwards as he watches the sands running through a large hourglass, he muses, “The aperture through which the sand runs is so tiny that, at first sight, it seems as if the level in the upper glass never changes.  To our eyes, it appears that the sand runs out ...only at the end.  And ‘til it does, its’ not worth thinking about ‘til the last moment when there’s no more time…when there’s no more time to think about it.”     

Oh, I know that, in comparison, I may have used my time more productively than many other people.  A lot of  people waste their lives in pursuit of hedonistic pleasure or self-aggrandizement.   Or worse, they throw away their lives through self-destructive behaviors or destroy other people’s lives through mistreatment or violence.  Yet for even those of us who have had good intentions, have we made the best use of our time?

I never have come to terms with reality, always fantasizing that life and the world could be more ideal.  It may not be so, but it often appears that the good die young, and the bad live on into old age. Why can’t those persons throughout history who devoted their lives to helping others, to making the world a better place, who had the talent to create great beauty in life, live very long lives? 

Can you imagine a 20^th-century world without World War I, the Russian revolution and communism, World War II, the Cold War?  What if Archduke Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had not been assassinated at age of fifty and had had time to continue his reformist influence that well may have defused the tension between Serbia and the monarchy?  There may have been no Great War, no millions of dead, no World War II, not so much horror and sorrow.

Anyone who cares to learn the true facts of history now knows through revelations from U.S. and former Soviet Union officials that J.F.K. and Bobby, through back-channels, literally prevented World War III and nuclear holocaust.  What if John F. Kennedy had not been shot at age 47 and, instead, had time to carry out his plans to withdraw our troops from Vietnam and to continue to counter, as best he could, the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower had warned against?  Could he have prevented thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign civilians from dying?  Could he have prevented the waste of trillions of dollars?  We only can speculate, for he did not have enough time with us.  Neither did Bobby.

What if Martin Luther King, who died at 39, had had time to continue his message of non-violence, equal rights for all, economic balance among all citizens?  We might not have had the riots and blazing neighborhoods that followed his assassination.  He might have helped to avert the rapid back-slide into political discrimination and the disproportionate domination of wealth by so few.  His concern was for more than just the Blacks of the nation but rather for all.  But, his time was cut short.

Then in early history, there was Giordano Bruno in the 16^th century who, through his scientific observations, saw for himself that our sun is a star, just like many other stars in the heavens; and he expressed the opinion that we are not alone in the universe, that there are many worlds far beyond.  What other scientific revelations would he have found had the Church not burned him at the stake in 1600 at age fifty-two?  He should have lived a long life.

There also have been many creative individuals such as the young physicist Henry Moseley whose scientific theories were so brilliant that he was assumed to be destined to win the Nobel Prize had he not been killed in action at Gallipoli in World War I.  Why couldn’t someone like that have more time?

Music historians claim that Mozart was the greatest musical genius of all times.  The beauty of his creations continues to enhance the lives of those of us who choose to listen.  What great works could he have written had ne not died of rheumatic fever at age thirty-five?  Wasn’t he entitled to a life at least as long as some evil person such as Mafia don Joseph Bonano?

And, what about the young and innocent such as Ryan White who received a tainted blood transfusion and died of AIDS at eighteen, or Martin Richard, the little eight-year-old boy who recently was blown to bits in a terrorist bombing in Boston?  Ironically, one of the last photos of him showed him holding a sign that he had made that said, “No more hurting people.”  If they had lived full lives, what contributions might they have made to the world?

If people must meet untimely deaths, why not the evil and destructive people of the world instead, those terrible individuals who harm others, destroy the planet, those who lie, cheat, and steal?  There are far too many of those.  Had their time been extremely short, what horrors could have been avoided?   

What if Adolf Hitler had died young of syphilis in Munich, or Josef Stalin had died early so that his paranoid evil had no chance of infecting Russia and the world?  How much more wonderful the world might have been without the Hitler’s Holocaust, Stalin’s genocides, “Bomber” Harris’ order to fire-bomb peaceful Dresden.

And frankly said, what about the possibility of an apparently sociopathic vice-president succumbing to his first heart attack instead of mechanically being kept alive like Darth Vader?  What if he, along with all of his nefarious political manipulators and financial supporters, had perished from the earth early on?  Might the President whom the people actually chose have had a chance to serve his two terms rather than a cadre of misguided ideologues who wreaked endless political and financial havoc upon the nation and the world?  How different would the world be today?  If that time had been allotted to other people who were motivated to do good, what a different world we would live in today.

Ironically in recent years, that realization has come to a couple of Supreme Court Justices.  They quietly have lamented to friends that, in retrospect, they now realize that the Supreme Court broke with all legal precedence, terminating a presidential vote-count, an action that subsequently was found to have put the wrong men into office and consequently unleashed unforeseen events that have caused great hardship and sorrow to the nation and the world.

None of us in this room is either J.F.K. nor Stalin, neither Mozart nor Darth Vader.  So, what do we make of our lives?  All that each of us can do is to take the time remaining for us and do the best we can.  Be positive and creative, be honest and loyal, treat each other well, love each other.  And, enjoy the company of those who feel as we do.  Live well, for time is short.  Eventually, this thing, time, all things devours.

© 2 April 20013

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories.  I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones.  Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.