Mick Jagger is a Lying Liar Who Lies

 My current earworm is the Stones' "Time is on my Side." Musical introduction!

As a too-long-to-be-parenthetical aside, I have to say that "earworm" gives me the heebie jeebies. The term does a marvelous job of evoking an absolutely horrifying image. It puts me in mind of the Babel fish, but 10,000% less useful. When I was a whippersnapper, we called it having a song stuck in your head, but I guess that's too many syllables these days.

Back to your regularly scheduled Mick defamation...

I've had this song stuck in my head for over a week now. The only line I know is "Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiime is on my side, yes it is," so that's been looping in my brain ad infinitum. It's pretty annoying, but it's given me an opportunity to reflect on the sentiment. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I'm aware that the song actually goes on to talk about a faithless lover coming back to the narrator, or something.

OK, so time might be on your side if you
have one of these. But you don't, do you?
I didn't think so.

But I'm not here to talk about faithless lovers. I'm here to talk about time. And how it is not, in fact, on my side. In high school, my junior year British lit teacher impressed the idea of carpe diem on us, and it's always stuck with me. I've done a lousy job of putting it into practice, even though I'm fully on board with the notion. Today, the Masters Boyce watched a Doctor Who episode in which the character Martha Jones relates this advice from her mother: "Never do tomorrow what you can do today." Her clone (I swear it makes sense in context) helpfully pitches in, "'Cause you never know how long you've got." -- i.e. Carpe the freaking Diem.

Lately, I've had a few experiences which have really driven this point home. We don't know how long we've got. And that doesn't even mean that gravity might reverse itself while I'm having my morning coffee and we all go sailing off into the void of space to meet our untimely ends at the hands of a merciless, airless, freezing / burning (depending on whether or not you're in the path of a wayward sun ray) vacuum.

Anything in the could happen. Debilitating diseases rob people of their ability to use their bodies. Financial catastrophe robs people of their dreams of seeing the world. Children grow up before you get to have them photographed in the smocked jumper Aunt Tilda so thoughtfully made you. Wheat crop collapse could rob you of your burning desire to make the world's largest strudel. You just never know what's around the corner. I could lose my hands in a tragic tooth brushing incident and never type again (Shut up, it could happen.).

You could fall asleep at an awkward angle and horrifying nocturnal gremlins could come during the night to sit on you and / or gape from the corner. YOU DON'T KNOW.

All we have for certain is right here, right now. This moment. What are you doing with it? Are you pursuing a dream--even if it's just getting your ducks in a row so you can actively go for it?--or are you coasting along in a rut, pushing all the things you want to accomplish to the back burner? We never know how long we've got. Even if I never accomplish some of the big things I want to do, I want to be able to say that I tried. That I gave it my best. That I was working on it. I don't want to come to the end of my time--however much that may be--and know that I squandered what I had.