Eulogy of time

Timeless or just losing time?

Eulogy of Time

Sometimes, before the day truly begins,
I jot down my thoughts in a way that isn’t poetry or prose.
It’s simply how my mind connects the dots.

Today’s reflection is on time:
its silent power,
its omnipresence,
its mysterious influence over every part of our lives.

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Eulogy of Time

Time, the most powerful of all.
The soldier that is never defeated.
Long live Time,
He who has seen it all.

Owner of the three swords: seconds, minutes, and hour,
Yet the average human leaves him in a corner of the room,
A mere source of information.

A sneaky man who doesn’t budge.

Whether you are late,
He will be your nemesis.
And if you are early,
You will still meet him at your end.

He who doesn’t run but ticks.

We all blame death.
But no one ever catches his friend,
The one who helps serve the orders:
Mr. Time.

He who competes with no one but himself,
Yet everyone is racing with him.

Everyone has a timeframe.
Everyone has a time clause.
When?
When will it be?
Nobody knows.

They say time heals all pain.
But we forget, pain is measurable.
So pain and time are not foes.

Time will count,
Until your scars eventually fade.
What you see is a faded scar,
But nobody hears the tick-tick-tock
As the scars fades away.

We grow plants and farms,
And we expect growth.
But in the dark,
Time doesn’t stop.
It watches.
It counts.

And as I write this,
It doesn’t pause to glare at me.
It ticks.

Everyone talks about now, present, and future,
Forgetting that with every tick,
The now is already washed into something new.

There is no now.
It’s either just passed
Or is yet to come.

And so, when the egg woman tells me
That a boiled egg costs ₦300,
Is that an additional ₦100 for her time and water?
I thought: “Labour is time.”

And as I looked at the clock,
It gave a wink,
The long hand sitting on 20 minutes.

So I paid.
Time always wins.

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Closing Reflection

I’m learning not to fight time,
But to honor it.
To live inside it,
Instead of letting it slip by unnoticed.

Maybe we don’t need more time,
Maybe we need more awareness of it.

Maybe honoring time
Is how we honor Allah’s gift of life.

“By time, indeed, mankind is in loss,
Except those who believe and do righteous deeds,
and encourage one another to truth,
and encourage one another to patience.”
(Surah Al-‘Asr, 103:1–3)

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Until the silence sings our names once more,
Hameedah