溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
If There Is a Time for Everything, What Is Now the Time For?
If there is a time to be born and to die, to plant and to reap, do I know what now is the time for?
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
Ecclesiastes's song that "there is a time for everything" held a view of time not as a resource we master but an order we must yield to. This diverges head-on from the later stance of conquering and filling time. Stoic philosophy too taught the wisdom of following nature's seasons, and the Eastern I Ching made discerning the time to advance and to withdraw the core of wisdom. From the other side, the modern age made time an object we organize and fill with efficiency — make the time rather than wait for it. Whether to yield to time or master it still flows split over the ancient rhythm of Ecclesiastes.
In an age eager to achieve everything in haste, this question — that all has its season — bids us set down impatience and discern the time of now.
The author of Ecclesiastes sings that every matter of life has its own season: a time to be born and to die, to weep and to laugh, to plant and to pluck up.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
The author of Ecclesiastes sings that every matter of life has its own season: a time to be born and to die, to weep and to laugh, to plant and to pluck up. This famous list reminds us that time is not a resource we spend at will but a rhythm, each thing holding its own season. I sense this question quietly loosens the illusion of control. Force the reaping, and it is still time to plant; grip what you hold, and the time to let go still comes. Before the wisdom to discern what now is the time for, I stand humbly too.
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