There is a demographic in our world comprised of people to whom resistance and opposition come naturally: the "rebounders." Your typical rebounder is characterized by a haughty attitude, is quick to anger or dispute, and won't take "no" for an answer. They fight anything that comes their way with whatever they may have at their disposal until they fall to their knees in exhaustion. Why do they do this? Because these people have a complex about being acted on by any force that may change them, no matter how inconsequential or harmless that force may really be. And, united in large enough numbers, this demographic can ebb away just about any tide of change rolling their way. Any tide, that is, but time.
In a country where pretty much everything you can think of falls under the order of checks and balances, time is an agency that goes about its business completely undisturbed. Time doesn't stop working for Martin Luther King Day, Good Friday, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, or even Christmas, if you can believe that (hell, not even Walmart is open Christmas, and Walmart is open all the time.). Unlike many of our earthly programs and endeavors, time never retrogrades. Unlike even the most disciplined soldier, time never gets off-step. Time presses onward and takes anything and everything with it, regardless of whether they're trying to put up a fight or not.
The aforementioned rebounders who fight any force that come their way try and fight time just like any other enemy. While time destroys the collagen fibers in the face of a supermodel past her prime, she gets botox injections, only for time to get to work destroying those too. As time slowly brittles the bones and atrophies the muscles of an aging star athlete, this rebounder empties his savings account with mass purchases of gym memberships, bull shark testosterone, and all that other stuff that makes a vitamin store smell so weird--all while time dutifully keeps chipping away at the athlete's insides. And even while time causes two people, who, at the beginning of the year were happy as they could be, to become alienated from each other, the hopeless romantic wades against the stream, fumbling all the while in feeble hopes of just somehow winning back the other's heart. For the people who will not ever admit defeat, time will ultimately have the final say.
Although I'm no supermodel or star athlete, I've been a witness to some of time's more brutal work just this year. I think of myself and my circumstances just a year ago and I realize just how much time has taken with it before my very eyes. I imagine standing on a riverbed and watching as the things I held dear--loved ones, possessions, ideas I clung to--slowly, yet constantly and without any sign of stopping, float down the river before me, and I find my feet rooted to the ground, helpless to resist. One of the most sinister things about our mutual acquaintance time is how it operates so slowly and in a realm where we can't notice its changes until we finally blink and re-envision the world in which we've been living. It's like the old adage goes: "You never really know what you had until it's gone."
I would like to close this second part of my series on a much more positive note that'll make time look less like an enemy and hopefully more like a neutral and natural force. While it is true that time takes with it many things that we hold dear, it is absolutely crucial that we realize that time also leaves new things where the old have been taken away. Like any scientific process of which equilibrium is a key concept to its explanation, time will replace what it has taken in some way or another. Time may not rekindle a beloved romance, restore an afflicted body, or bring back our loved ones from the dead, but what it always leaves us is more of itself. And with that precious extra time, we can find a companion, be it physical, mental, or spiritual, to ride time's ever-flowing tide with. When the effects of time have got you down, realize that there's more of it ahead.
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