The Teacher and The Crook

The cogs and pistons don’t run so smoothly these days, have you noticed?

In the mornings, we splutter into motion and strange noises escape the nooks and crannies that held their tongue not so long ago. They’re subtle - for now - but they’re there, distant like the air-raid siren of a neighbouring town.

The end is coming. You hear it over the hills. But there’s still time. There’s still time if you heed the warning, pay attention to that distant siren, those subtle sounds; they are both your coming demise and your saving grace.

There’s still time.

There’s still time...

Despite knowing better, we place trust in such an elusive crook.

Time: that deceitful shapeshifter, a charlatan of shadows who quickens the spilling sand in our truancy of presence.

How were we to know?

Invincible in our youth, we set fire to our insides, insolent to our opportunities and entitled in our being.

We challenge whoever or whatever thinks they can steal us from this life, staring them down with a naivety we mistake for courage.

Our minds and bodies sponge up the poisons of the world and in our innocence we confuse the numbing with liberation; the fleeting confidence with self-esteem.

But Time, despite all his deceit, is willing to teach. We just have to pay attention. We will all fall victim to his trickery, all curse his name as he cheats us. But this is the price we pay for our disrespect.

Like a right of passage, we allow ourselves to be led astray, taken by our ego into a world where we live forever and where Time is merely the dance-floor for our existence.

But this is the trap. We learn our ego is in cahoots with the spilling sand and as we are distracted by this dreamland, the years slip away.

And then...one morning, we realise the spring with which we once started the day has become a splutter.

Noises are coming from the silent spaces of our body.

The cogs and pistons don’t seem to be moving so smoothly.

We are getting older.

But if we are willing to listen. Willing to learn...there is still Time.

There is always Time.