Time and Chaos

I wanted to talk to someone but there is no one. So, I decided to talk to everyone. Hello, Internet. My name is James and I am a real boy with real thoughts.

As a teenager, you exist in a state of what seems to be eternal disorder and confusion.

Nothing seems to make sense yet everything is organised. Life, to me, seems to be a jumble of structured chaos. Part of me loves this galaxy of disorganisation but an equal, and opposite, part of me detests it and longs for order and a logical system of progression.

Often, life is in flux between these two states and is never explicitly one or the other. Instead, I see it as a pendulum swaying in the void. Some points are more structured. Some points are less structured.

I find myself longing for the less structured moments. In my opinion, these are the more exciting. Evens in my life are mapped out before I have even thought of taking them as an option: University starting dates, University finishing dates, coursework topics and lecturers.

We are trapping ourselves in the one thing we have no control over. 

Time.

We can’t control time. We never will be able to. We are just forever plodding on into this unknown called ‘the future’ without the faintest possibility of going back. Of course we can guess because of the more structured moments but there is that glimmer of wonderful spontaneity that gives us all that little kick and makes us feel alive.

Time is finite.

One day it will run out and no one can escape this.

I also believe time is a concept that we attribute meaning to. I found this by walking through a graveyard today and seeing the dates on the tombstones. Fourteen year olds are resting next to seventy years olds.

Even if nobody ever reads this, I will feel closure on these thoughts. Just to express them to a wider audience than my own brain gives me a reassuring sense of self-longing and contentedness.

(I didn’t know contentedness was a word. Now I do.)

In short, we worry too much about the future and not enough about the present.

This entire thought process stemmed from me being a little bit jealous. I thought to myself “Why am I jealous now? I will have my entire life to be jealous and my jealousy won’t change it the first place. I need to accept this and move on with my life.”

Accepting is part of life.

If you can’t change something then don’t work yourself up about it. Don’t get upset, or jealous or dragged down.

Just accept it.

Although people have said this to me before, my own mind brought me to this idea. I now feel as if I understand what these people were saying to me and I’d like to tell you that, if you are feeling the same as I am, you will have an epiphany similar to mine soon.