I didn’t have time to write this, so I did.

When someone dies, it feels like our duty to console those who are left behind, so we go ahead and do so, it is only right that we do anyway, that’s the truth about being humane. Our messages are all about how the departed lived a good life and how much of a good person they were, despite their flaws. What about time? Good people are everywhere, not the time spent with the unique specimen who would have just left this earth to go live another life in a better place or in the emptiness of the cosmos. Time is the concept we seem to always ignore until we run out of it or it is taken away from us. Kind of sad for the species that is constantly evolving and constantly tying it to time.

For a long time, I never understood what to say to someone who has lost a loved one. I would think of somewhat the end of the world and some sort of dystopia all caused by one event, death. It felt so taboo to talk about it, let alone try and make a person feel comfortable when clearly their world is being torn apart. This went on until I lost my grandmother, some 7 years ago. I did not understand what was going on because my world was ending as well. She was the pillar to not only my spiritual life, but my whole extended family’s. Not a single tear fell from my eyes, my heart was numb, for a whole 4 days. My mother went through it. My sister went through it. My whole family, overall, went through it. I wasn’t. I was stuck. I was angry. Angry at a world that was just as confused as I was. I was stuck in a time when she was still there, loving us and showing us how to live purposefully. I was angry because instead of being grateful for time, I was getting stuck in it.

Just like 14 year old Tadiwa, most of us are so stuck in time that we can never be grateful for it. We are stuck in memories, making ourselves ungrateful for having lived them the way we did, flaws and all. When we get stuck, we tend to just pick the good, never any other experiences, why would we do that to ourselves when we all want to live perfect lives. When perfection falls out, our worlds fall out too. Perfection might be far from our nature, and so are a lot of the things we idolize. There is something, the first creation, “In the beginning”, that we tend to ignore. Our universe is fabricated in this because at the right time, everything was created, we began existing and so did everything we think we know, so why not be grateful for time. We love everything else so much that we want it in a short amount of time that we never see how much value we actually attach to this time. We would all take the offer to have everything we need in the shortest time possible, but we can never give everything we have to get an extra millisecond for any experience.

I’ve had the chance to learn. From a lot of mistakes and just living one day after the next that, we cannot attach anything to time, and hence we should be grateful for it more than anything else. Allow the people you love to hear your voice, to see your face and to experience things with you, all in this unlimited but very restricted time we have. Because of time, I befriended my parents and grew closer to my sibling. Time brings forth sections to do everything good so it doesn’t get wasted. Time brings love, forgiveness, commitment to living healthier and so much more I might not be able to comprehend just because “in the beginning” is a testament of everything, including space, coming under one concept, time. The greatest debates are around the creation. Because creation introduces time and maybe some are not ready to accept that time had to be there first, not to be right, for life to begin. Everyday, “In the beginning” must be a reminder that when we open our eyes, the clock starts ticking.

If we have all this time and if it is so important, the why aren’t we so aware of it and why have we missed so much of it and why are we feeling wasteful. Attention. There are so many things that beg desperately for our attention that we end up just getting lost in all the things we will not be grateful for later. Most of the people I’ve met, I follow on instagram and other social media platforms. In as much as it hurts me, most of us shift from friendships where we experience things together to friendships where we just watch each other. We are in the illusion that we are still friends because we watch each other’s feed, but is it really, or we have replaced the time we could have experienced together with the time we watch each other live separately. We are so “busy” working on something that we can’t call for 15 minutes, yet we spend hours on end watching strangers live their strange lives on the internet. Tying it all together, we are always enraged , losing all form of empathy simply because of the screens in front of us. we use time to type things we will regret to people who need to hear it the least.

I’m no old-head who doesn’t use any social media. It takes less than 30 minutes to get a reply from me on any of my social media platforms. The time saved by technology is something I am super grateful for. I am even pursuing a degree and somewhat a career in tech, however, I would love some human common sense to make its way back into our lives. Maybe we can text each other more meaningful sentences and make more intentional calls so when the time comes, when we die, we can talk less about how we were good people, but we can testify more to the gratitude we feel for just the time we chose to be, to live like humans, not some foreign species who lived so far away from each other in the same time and spaces.

When my grandmother was laid to rest and the first shovel of gravel was poured on her casket, I was triggered. I cried more than ever because, I was still angry, but wasn’t allowing myself to go through it. She gave us some of the best memories and her time here seems more like an experience with a saint. More than anything, time allowed us to be together. So time gives that gratitude some sense. A lot more sense that should be common. A lot more sense when we see further than what we think we value.