Art of time

Benjamin Franklin once said that time is the stuff life is made of. He likely meant the collection of moments that make up a life — a long, linear track on which we imagine ourselves moving forward. Something like a train track, steady and directional.

But the more I watch my own mind, the more I see that time doesn’t behave like a track at all. The car I sit in meanders, climbs, dips, and sways. And inside that car, my mind wanders even more wildly — darting into the past, leaping into the future, intersecting the present only in brief flashes.

Somewhere along the way, I realized: Time is the stuff my consciousness is made of.

And once that insight landed, time stopped feeling linear. It became shapeless, creative, boundless, dimensionless. Like an artist, my mind draws, sketches, and paints my experiences in ways only I can know. Time became the medium, the brush, and the paint producing endless streams of art that I paints my consciousness into existence.

The Many Vagaries of Time

Time flies.
Time stands still.
Time drags.
Time reverses.
Time repeats.
Time bends.
Time shrinks.
Time extends.
I keep time.
I lose time.
I gain time.
I waste time.
I use time.
I’m over time.
I’m under time.
It’s good time.
It’s bad time.
It’s perfect time.
It’s auspicious time.
It’s the right time.
Time is elastic.
Time is emotional.
Time is personal.

The Canvas of My Consciousness

With each swish of the brush called time, my mind perceives something — a memory, a fear, a hope, a longing — and paints another stroke onto the shapeless canvas of my consciousness.

The artwork keeps changing. Evolving. Becoming. Disappearing. Reappearing.

I look my art at night, I cry. I look my art at sunrise, I smile. People show up my in my art throughout the day, emerging from its many dimensions. They splash their paints and brushes of time on my consciousness. Sometimes I like it; sometimes I don’t. I look my art at night again. It looks new now. I smile. I look my art at sunrise, I smile.

Sometimes I step back and the whole thing looks beautiful. Sometimes I feel lost in the maze of strokes. Sometimes clarity arrives like a sudden beam of light. Sometimes fear floats me into emptiness, with no floor beneath. Sometimes joy lifts me beyond any imagined ceiling.

Often, my art makes no sense at all.

And then one day — quietly, without ceremony — I learn to enjoy what’s in front of me. To appreciate the stroke that is happening right now. To trust that each mark, each color, each texture is enriching the artwork of my consciousness.

I’m grateful that I’m able to step back and witness the quiet masterpiece time is painting through me, and I now see with gratitude the countless influences — ancestral and contemporary — that have guided the brush, the paint and the story that’s always mine.

Time paints my life, time paints me as it endlessly paints itself.

Such is the art of time.

Inspired on March 31, 2026