No matter the who or what we think of ourselves or how we want our world to be, time is the one constant we have no control over.  As a clock ticks, time passes.  Sure you can reach out and pull the battery, but in terms of actually stopping time, none of us have that ability.  What we do have in terms of ability is how we use time, or better put: what we do with the time of now that represents the one human experience we all share.

For many of us, we are so lost in our perspectives that we live our lives as victims to time, victims to our own inept life-course.  In the waste of how one lives a life, there are no victims, only those who allow themselves to experience that which they experience, what I refer to as a self-imposed incarceration experience.

Ask anyone who is behind the walls of prison or locked in the cages of cells what they long for the most and they would say the same thing: freedom.  And yet, those of us who live outside the walls, who are free to live our lives take freedom for granted.  For many of us, we settle for relationships that are burdensome, jobs that are unfulfilling, and careers that are a dead end.  Rather than embracing this one human experience, rather than maximizing the opportunity of change, many choose, yes choose to be apart from life over being a part of life.

For many they are of the grateful dead.  They are grateful for their sobriety and yet dead to feelings of enthusiasm, passion, devotion, and affection.  For many, out of the need for relief, or not to think and feel, they are chained to their alcohol or drugs.  Others, at the slightest sensation of disappointment, regret, or conflict look outside of themselves for relief.  Then of course there are the multitudes of people who are so very insecure in their primary relationship within their perspectives of personal and social self, that power and control works as their mask to feed their thirst for intimidation.  And of course, I don’t want to leave out the souls who are so lost in their own confusion that out of fanciful fictional idealization they gain substance through their expensive cars, clothes, jewelry, bags and alike, as they think they play actor to the world as their audience.  All of these folks, the grateful dead sober person, the addict, and the control freak self-impose themselves to incarceration.

You cannot recover time, or recover from time wasted.  You can only discover how to maximize your time.

Tags: alcohol and drug, human experience, incarceration, power and control