Is time our enemy or our friend?

Question

Is time our enemy or our friend?

by Warren Domke

Little child can’t wait for a treat, or time spent in childlike pleasure

In his young mind each hour lasts an eternity

How can he know how many hours he has ahead?

How time will change him from a child to a boy to a man?

High school girl watches the clock, waiting for “him” to call or come by

She aches when they are apart, and her heart leaps when he’s there.

If his attention is too much she blushes, if too little she hurts.

How can she know how many hours it will take for her to grow into a woman?

Young man hurries to catch a bus or a train or a plane.

Cabbie, hurry up. I’m running late. There’s an extra tip if we make it on time.

Plane is late. Will I make my connection in Atlanta?

How can he know how these hours and minutes fall away like sand in an hourglass?

Woman watches her child asleep, wondering what she’ll grow up to be.

A woman of leisure? A wife and mother? A nurse? A teacher?

She’s little now—her mother worries about her. Will her choices be good?

How can she know that they’ll grow and age together, and the hours they share will pass?

Man waits near a telephone for a call from a grown child.

A new grandchild is coming. The minutes are like hours and the hours like days.

Will it be a boy or a girl this time? Will they be able to share those precious hours

that seemed to slip away with his own children?

How can he know what moments to value, and which to ignore?

Old woman rocks in a chair thinking about the days and hours she’s lived.

A love here, a child there, a good friend and some she could have done without.

How many people she’s known are gone now? Are they waiting somewhere for her?

How can she know that those hours past are gone forever except in her memories?

Time. It drags, it flies, it soars, it plunges. Good times, bad times. Times you cherish, And times you want to fade away forever. A broken heart here. A lost moment there.

It adds up to a lifetime.

How can we know when we are young how to cherish the hours and those who populate them?

Time—my enemy and my friend. A child, a schoolgirl, a young man, a mother, a grandfather, an old woman, and me. Aging and growing together and sharing time for a while.

Answer 1

Is three score and ten not poignantly balanced as a span scarcely adequate for the fulfillment of our dreams and, at the same moment, as a sentence of unbearable length, choked with contemplative yearning for lives unlived and potential selves lost irretrievably in the mingled scream of weltering tempest and plangent wave... Truly, Time is both mother and devourer of us all, and we are consumed by that which we are nourished by.

Answer 2

An excellent expression of a conundrum.

Time, like fire and water, is both a blessing and a curse. It is life; Yin and Yang.

It is the ever-present hand of mortality.

Answer 3

Time is simply the gauge that measures where we've been and where we are going. It is mechanical in its eternal existence. It is neither friend or foe.. it "is" and nothing more. Life however is a culmination of decisions, choices, and random occurrences; we do have control over such things. We should not waste our lives by wasting time then you are your own worst enemy. That is the enemy you should never make peace, as for time it continues forward, regardless, and threatens no one..

I enjoyed the read, it was insightful, and time well spent.

Answer 4

Time is both enemy and friend.

Time is our friend in that it affords us the opportunity to rectify the mistakes we have made, to become wiser and yet as we age, we look upon time as the enemy: "I never spent enough time with my family...", "I never took the time to smell the roses..." etc.,

I think we should look upon time as neither a friend nor enemy, but as a great gift that we should cherish.  When the day comes that we have no more time, we should have no regrets...

Great question.

Answer 5

Time waits for no-one.  We can't stop it.  Sometimes time moves too fast leaving us struggling to keep up with, let alone appreciate, our lives and the lives of others.  Sometimes it moves too slow like we just want to jump from now to Sometime in the future when everything will be just right.

Time marches on and we can choose to feel bad, indifferent or good about it.  We can regard it as the enemy which leaves us feeling bad because it's an enemy we just can't defeat.        

Or we can see it as our friend, so that every time we think about time we feel good.

When we look back focus on things that bring a smile to our faces e.g. achievements we're proud of, events we enjoyed, people we enjoyed being with.  Anything that makes us feel happy.  When we're in the present, we try to be in the present. Enjoy and appreciate what we have at the moment little things or great things.  When we think about the future, we think about the great things we expect it to bring. We visualize having everything we want, being happy, and having everyone around us be happy.

Whatever it is, the aim is to simply feel good whenever we think about time and develop a positive association with it.  So it becomes our friend not our enemy.

Answer 6

Time is both my enemy and my friend.

Answer 7

Neither. more of an option really. Its up to u to take, give, spend, or waste it. Time is blameless. Responsible for nothing but itself. Its only job is to continue. We could only find fault in time should it end. Great poem btw.

Answer 8

I'm so much more aware of time now, my time, I don't want to waste a minute of it.  Thanks for the great read!