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There was a Thai millionaire who was very sick. Doctors said he had only one year left to live. The millionaire wasn’t afraid of dying but ever since he was a boy he had tried to figure out what time was without success. He felt his life was not to be completed until his curiosity about time had been stilled. One day there was in the papers and on television an announcement about the millionaire offering a reward of ten million Baht to any Thai citizen who could come forward with an explanation about what time was. Only the most outstanding explanations were to be considered for the reward and preferably they should include reference to real-life situations. The millionaire’s secretaries and assistants had a busy time sorting out all the incoming proposals, most arriving by regular mail. Some of the explanations were considered worth informing the millionaire about. There was one explanation the millionaire really liked. It said that a temple was a time machine and no other place could compete with the temple in understanding about time. Of course, every Thai knew about that, at least subconsciously, although forgotten about from time to time, therefore this explanation could not be granted a reward. Now, the millionaire visited the temple every day, to stay as close to time as possible. He and his assistant always went by a Tuk Tuk as he couldn’t get inside a taxi cab. One day, this was during the rainy season, roads were flooded, after the visit to the temple the Tuk Tuk got stuck, engine failing as the water went up to the travelers feet splashing them wet. The millionaire, now in anger because this year’s rainy season was the worst in many years, demanded his portable chair to be placed on a hill by the roadside and then the assistant and the Tuk Tuk driver helped in getting the millionaire up on the hill. The millionaire then asked his two helpers to retreat out of sight. The millionaire looked up at the rainy sky and let go of his anger. He asked the sky: -Why you do this to me? There was no answer. The millionaire asked again: -Who are you? -I am time. -Do you have a name? -Permanent Holiness. -Never heard that before. That’s not a name. -Hieronymus is my name. -Never heard that either. May I call you Jerry? -That’s all right. I’m Jerry. -What’s your mission if I may ask? -It’s me that is you. -Are you crazy? What do you mean? -If I weren’t you..you would not exist. -You mean you are my Mind and I’m something else? -Now, we are getting somewhere. -What about me, then, what am I? -You are matter. Physics. -And you aren’t? -That’s right. I’m not. -I don’t feel like being just matter either, at least not only that. How can you say so? -Because that part of you that feels itself being something more, that’s me and not you. -Oho, you are something that’s similar for all people, right? -Now we are getting somewhere. -At least I’m my own history, ain’t I? I can experience my own changes and the changes around me and that’s history. -So far you have made two conclusions. The first says you are physics and the second says you are history. There is one more thing that you are. Can you figure that out too? -What is left? What can I do that you cannot do? -Think again! Think deeper! What is beyond your horizon? What is looming ahead of you and what do you do about it? -Hmm. Well. Longing, I do. -That’s right. You do. I don’t. Now you have mapped all three that you are: Physics. History. Longing. The millionaire, who now had a stiff neck having stared at the sky during the conversation, lowered his head. He looked at the other two men sitting on another hill along the road, thinking: Here we are, all three of us, all different in physics, history and longing and yet so close, so similar, so united in that ungraspable substance we call time which wasn’t even a substance in the proper sense. But hadn’t he just caught it for a little while – hadn’t he just hold it in his hands for a little while, hadn’t his tongue just been talking to it and his ears just been listening to it?
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