Uniquity

Can I tell you something? Whisper something in your ear? Good.

Can I tell you a simple thought, one that’s been on my mind for several weeks now? It’s only four words, but four very powerful words. Four unexpected words. Words that you may have read before, in different sentences, with different meanings, but four words that are electrically charged from some crazy kind of ethereal dimension, reaching out to whoever chooses to meditate upon them with some ill understood type of spiritual energy. What is this thought, you ask?

Okay. I’ll tell. It’s this:

This time is unique.

If you give this sentence a small amount of thought, it appears somewhat obvious and apparent. After all, there is only one “present.” Only one “now.” And, yes, that time is unique, because all the googolplex of permutations that all come to existence, now, will never all be in this exact state again. So, yes, this time is unique.

Millions of people sleep through this. And that’s just in your neck of the woods alone. If we consider the global population, I would safely guess that 99.99999998 percent of mankind yawns and continues to do what it has done before simply because it is what has been done before. That’s if it even considers my four-word sentence at all.

Since some point in February, these words have been ricocheting in the three pound watermush housed inside my skull, surfacing to my previously drowsing third eye thingamabob maybe a ten or twelve times a day.

This time is unique.

I do not want to go too deeply into my personal situation; LE prides his privacy. But I’d like to generalize it a bit, in hopes that maybe, just maybe, some individual who chances upon this, today or in the year 3145 AD, might get a prodding to make the smallest of changes in the course of the 86,400 decisions that are available to him every single day.

Because I got that ol’ nagging feeling that this time is unique, it’s putting a check against me from reverting back to my old ways. How so? A really, really bad conscience, for one, not to mention possible life-altering health implications from a physical point of view. Mentally, my old mind set, like a rebel insurgency, has been constantly sniping at my new mind set, whose fifth column news media is doing it’s best to undermine it. Argh! Economically, I’m out of work, and it’s at this intersection where my conscience and our new formula, “This time is unique” is vibrating its strongest.

There’s not as many options before me as I’d like. Nothing sure, either, due in part to the weak economy and also, in part, well, let’s be honest, to a weak will. The bases aren’t loaded, and it’s not the bottom of the ninth, but it isn’t the first inning, either. To further the analogy, there’s a man on first, one out, and it’s the bottom of the fifth. I’m up, and … let’s see … I’m pinch hitting, and haven’t seen any real action all season. Spent plenty of hours in the batting cages, etc, but this is the first time I’m facing a real pitcher. Get what I’m saying, without me actually saying it?

I think when a neon sign bent into the words “This time is unique” is flashing constantly before you, you gotta take heed and notice it. Face it, the time will not always be unique, despite what appears to be obviously and patently true. It’s kind of like kairos versus chronos, two Greek concepts of time, which I won’t go into here, save that the latter describes what a ticking clock measures, while the former refers to our subjective experience of time. And I believe that subjective quality has an objective, or Objective, part of it, too.

So take my advice, as I swallow hard and try to follow it, too. Do the unexpected. Do something different. Do something new. Take a chance, if that’s what’s called for. It takes courage, lots and lots and lots of it, but that will be supplied, I believe, if you believe.

This time is unique.