The Time Machine

The time – it’s flying. Each day, whilst we are busy working on our future, what we do not tend to realize is that we leave a bit of our present behind, neglected and not cherished. Every single day since we have been school kids to corporate workers, all we have focused on has been “what next?”; little did we realize back then that the question should have been “what now?”.

While we were in school, we hated the curriculum, the spoon feeding, the discipline and the regularity. All we wanted was to get out of these 4 walls and become older to take our decisions ourselves. We wanted to be independent and free from our parents deciding for us. 

We hated being young. 

As we walked into college, all excited and geared up, we discerned that we had already entered in our first phase of “adulting”. With no fixed curriculum anymore, teachers not on the top of our heads to study hard and get good grades, us always panicking about attendance and getting our mind boggled on what to do after graduation, we started missing school. 

We missed being younger. 

The environment that our school had, the guidance that our teachers provided, the punishments that made us better – the routine that we had, we suddenly began to miss getting spoon fed like babies. We desperately wanted to quit studying and start earning. The corporate world excited us – the salary, the perks, the financial and personal independence and the unabridged idea of being “employed”.

But the story does not end here, it just begins because unexpectedly college came to an end and we became a part of the horse-race, trying to get jobs and being employed. This is when we finally grabbed a job that paid us well below what we deserved but just enough for us to be termed as “employed” and this turned our world upside down. That moment, we then missed our care-free college days. We missed how we used to be the cheerful teenagers and go out partying whenever we wanted to; we missed the college campus we once hated where nobody cared about anyone else, the corridors that were free and forgiving to roam in, and the fresh air we could breathe every now and then. The little pocket money we got from our parents seemed so much more enough than the pay-cheque our job offered.

Now at this very moment, our office desk/cabins started to eat us up and the same 9-5 routine got boring. Saturdays did not seem fun anymore as the only two days you got an off to relax were weekends. We realized that salary boosts were not as easy as we thought and the deadlines by our superiors were practically not possible to be achieved. 

We wanted to be the younger, carefree ‘adults’, again.

After we got settled in our respective jobs and earned a sufficient living, came the idea of “settling down” and creating a “family” of our own. That’s when our responsibilities turned all around and now, we did not just have to take care of ourselves but an entire household. 

Needless to say, we desperately missed being younger.

This cycle of not appreciating the present moment and rather focusing either on the worrisome future or missing the old days once they are gone never ends. In the hurdle of life we always forget what we have now is way more precious than what we are going to have next or what we had earlier.

Every single phase in our lives comes with its own pros and cons, it is on us whether we want to enjoy the pros or sulk over the cons. This is exactly when we need to understand, life is not a time machine and we are not time travelers. We, in fact, will sadly never have the opportunity to go back in our pasts to relive it or advance further towards our future to modify it. Yet, life is a time machine that is stagnant, that focuses only on the time that is right now, in this very exact moment. By every second passing, you miss a little of it every time.

Every second that is passed, becomes a yesterday you cannot experience again.

Do not seek a time machine but recognize time’s value in the ‘right now’ and live, today, before it is too late and you are gone, long gone. This time machine shall stop here, for you to launch your own time full of ‘presents’ and an emphasis on the should haves rather than the could haves. For as I shall devise it – the present is the new future!