Captured Thought: Taking Time Into Your Own Hands

"They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
- Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

As a self-declared optimist I am naturally obligated to believe that even in the most opaque, smoggy, and dreary of rooms there is a light that is waiting to be turned on. I am constantly under the impression, no matter how far-fetched or - if I dare say the "i" word - impossible things may be, there is always a way to achieve our goals. But in addition to being an optimist, as self-diagnosed introvert, who loves to do beyond my fair share of meditation and internal reflection, I have come to the conclusion that we must always take matters into our own hands in order for change to be successful.

As humans, and even more so, as Americans, we tend to believe that things will be handed to us clean and dusted with a pristine red bow as long as we just let life take its course. But what if I said life doesn't have a pre-made course? What if in reality we don't walk a path already made for us and accept every curveball, fastball, breaking ball, or change up on the basis that "time heals all wounds." I believe we are the authors of our own stories. We think that life has a way of untangling itself with time, and maybe it does, but not without ourselves acting as the catalyst.

Paradoxically I must presently travel to the past and reference a previously read section of Orlando where Orlando spent much time thinking, but only a moment acting.

"...time when he is thinking becomes inordinately long; time when he is doing becomes inordinately short" (72).

This quote prompted the question, why are we given seemingly eons upon eons to think, but nanoseconds to act? If we truly seek change, why does it seem we are given so little time to achieve it? My answer to this would be that time spent doing and prompting that desired change may be brief, but these decisions we make to change have a immeasurable lifetime of consequences. Orlando spent what seemed like centuries in his own head questioning and concluding, pondering and answering. Even though he was evolving mentally, nothing truly changed until he declared and made the conscious choice to no longer write to please anyone but himself. When he literally put in on paper and started to write freely, he had changed, and it was not time that had forced him to do so.

As the extremely wise, universally loved, and uncontroversial Yoko Ono said, "Time is a concept that humans created." I believe this holds true. As much as I believe and tell myself that everything will be okay with time, I know that this is only true because I have made, are making, and will make the choice to change. It is foolish to believe that the light in the previously mentioned room will turn itself on as long as I wait patiently for it to appear. It is not the wait that brings the solution, but the conscious decisions to take action and flip the switch in our own dungeons that heal our wounds.

Venice Beach, August, 2012