Time

Throughout the semester we've been reading Savater's book "The Questions of Life" and every week we've been focusing on a different chapter/topic. After reading most of the book I started wondering which topic Savater would choose to finish his book and now that I've read it I think I understand why he picked "time" as his closing topic. Time is something so big and yet so enigmatic, it's really hard to define what time is. I mean sure, there is a technical definition in the dictionary but that's not what I mean. Time is essential in our everyday lives, we live according to it and it measures our entire life. The number of years we'll live, the number of seconds a kiss may last, the number of minutes the referee is going to add in a soccer game, everything is measured through time and that is why it is so important.

In his book, Savater quotes Pascal, who says that past is the most important of the 3 tenses. This has always been a topic of discussion because some people say that past and future are equally important but I want to try and prove them wrong.

Sure, our past defines our present, and we live our present focusing on the future but if you think about it, the past is unchangeable and the future unpredictable. No matter what you do you cannot alter the past and no matter what you do you cannot know what the future will bring.

This is why I think the present is the most important time to focus on. You should live every moment to the fullest without regreting what happened in the time and without worrying about the future, which may not even come.

I'm not saying that the past and the future are completely useless. On the contrary, we should learn from the past mistakes and we should always have goals to accomplish in the future, but only so that our present can be better.

Taking into account what has happened in the past helps us live the present better, we learn from past mistakes and try to avoid them because we know what tehy bring.

In the same way we plan our lives according to the future. We prepare ourselves in school for the future, we eat healthy so that we'll live longer and we take our time looking for a partner in life because we don't want to be alone in the future.

Nevertheless, to me, we do all these things so that our present feels better and more enjoyable. It's nice to have goals and it's nice to have memories of past times but I think that It is very important to know that the present is the only thing that matters because let's face it, no matter how much we want it, there's nothing we can do to change the past, and in the same way, we can die the next week, or tomorrow, or even in the next hour so, the only time worth focusing on for me, is the present. That's why I intend to live my life to the fullest each moment.

I heard a quote somewhere, I can't remember where but I think it's a nice way to close this post: "Dream as if you'll live forever, Live as if you'll die today"