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Letters

The Paradox of Time

Anonymous

Anonymous writes from a prison in VIC.

Steven HWG via Unsplash

On one hand, how can we deny the reality of time? We need it to go from here to there, to prepare ingredients for a meal. Build a house, read this story. You need time to grow up, to learn new skills. Whatever you do seems to take time. Everything you do is subject to time, and eventually it is going to kill you.

“Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time,” as Shakespeare once wrote.

You can compare it to a raging river that drags you along its muddy banks as it flows. Or like a fire in which everything is burnt up and consumed in a puff of smoke. The only way to deal with time is to be here and now in the present as it’s happening. It’s the happenings that make our past, present and future – that control our life’s destiny.

So after reading this, if we can take five minutes and look through the other end of the looking glass, it just might help some of us find what we’re looking for or help with the now.

Some of this is how I’ve interpreted what I have read in Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now.

This has helped me in the NOW.

On one hand, how can we deny the reality of time? We need it to go from here to there, to prepare ingredients for a meal. Build a house, read this story. You need time to grow up, to learn new skills. Whatever you do seems to take time. Everything you do is subject to time, and eventually it is going to kill you.

“Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time,” as Shakespeare once wrote.

You can compare it to a raging river that drags you along its muddy banks as it flows. Or like a fire in which everything is burnt up and consumed in a puff of smoke. The only way to deal with time is to be here and now in the present as it’s happening. It’s the happenings that make our past, present and future – that control our life’s destiny.

So after reading this, if we can take five minutes and look through the other end of the looking glass, it just might help some of us find what we’re looking for or help with the now.

Some of this is how I’ve interpreted what I have read in Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now.

This has helped me in the NOW.

This
letter
was originally printed in the
October 2025
edition of About Time.

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Welcome to About Time

About Time is the national newspaper for Australian prisons and detention facilities

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