Past, present and future: what exactly is time?

Is it the moments, smells, touches that flash through our brain when we go through ancient pictures representing scenarios of our lives? Is it the ridiculous spontaneous laughs we share with our buddies over a sarcastic joke some of us made up out of a random, silly situation? Is it that moment of peace and solitude we experience while feeling serious about our current situation and willing to plan for what is yet to come?

What exactly is this mysterious yet precious delicate thing that is messing with our minds, hearts and turning our lives upside down? Not to mention that it seems once way too long, once way too short, but keeps going anyway, sweeping events with its irreversible continuous flow, flipping pages along its way, waiting for nothing and flashing by with no one to catch it.

What are we supposed to do with it? Look back at what it has done to us and collapse of attachment to a reality we no longer possess nor control? Escape the one we already have and fantasise about having a brand new one with perfect ecstasies, to which nothing but happiness and harmony belong and where all sorrows and bitterness don't dare to intrude? Ignore the suffering of the now and continue hoping for a better one to come by some Divine miraculous achievement?

If time teaches us anything, it's the awareness of its value. In our lives, people come, go, live and die when we just didn't have enough of them, not even close. We prefer virtual relationships over the company of our own parents, one-night-stands over a visit to grandparents and a silly Facebook conversation with a crush we will never have over some good real time spent with true friends.

Years of school, college and work begin and end without us noticing or caring about trying to do our best, excelling in our tasks and improving our positions in life as individuals who can give purpose to their existence. Time alarms us that our clock is ticking and that we live only once, same as the people around us. It reminds us that we're not living right enough for our own happiness everyone's around us. Take the lesson time teaches you to heart, for nothing else in this world could teach you something barely as wise.