Learning to Love. Timing

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Timing
Eternity is unconceivable without time. Our understanding of time is linear, based on past events, through the present, on to an envisioned future. This thought process allows us to understand ‘cause and effect’, and anchor our perceived reality to factual evidence. However, the subjective experience of ‘depth, breadth and height’, which is the way love is measured according to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is a vertical thought process.

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Time is determined by Einstein's theory of relativity, where mass and time are interconnected, affecting planets and their orbits. It is also determined by the cultural impact their measurements and equivalences have on calendars. In the Chinese lunar/sun calendar, the year 2013 is 4709, the Year of the Dragon and will end on February 9^th. For the Ethiopians we are in 2005, since their calendar is made up of 13 months starting from the Annunciation of the birth of Christ, and will change on September 12^th. For the Hebrews, this 5773 started on the sunset of the 16^th of September 2012. In the Buddist Thai calendar we are in 2556. For the Burmese we are in 1375. For the Hindu calendar we have to add 3102 years to 2013- 5115. The Islamic year 1434 started on the 14^th of November. For the Tibetans this is a feminine year related to Water and the Snake. Our Gregorian calendar, most widely used, was set by decree in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, based on vernal equinoxes which lose 11 minutes every year, restored by  ‘leaping’ a day every 4^th  year, in February. In all cases time is relative.

We each have a personal timing for development, maturation and death. Our internal clocks are not only set by diurnal or nocturnal variations but by the seasons, the lunar changes and our own internal unraveling. Take me, for example, with a fiancé I rebuffed thirty years ago, who has now re-appeared in my life. I had pending dues with destiny, then. Now, my timing is right.
Decisive events in our lives set individual parameters to measure the impact of pain and success. Fate takes no notice of time. Life would be unbearable if it were not broken down into minutes and seconds. Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) said “It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”
Loving makes time bearable and eternal. Its memory prolongs the joy of youth and the hope of innocence. It´s never too early and never too late to love.