10 Seconds

10 seconds. Just enough time to take a breath, to fire a bullet, to make a decision, to die, to live, to exist... 

Life is just a pile of seconds. Emptiness. Untouchable and unreachable, but still there, the time. 

- Hm, how mysterious. 

- What, Melanie?

- Something.

Why are we so broken? So contained from being the humans, from being what we want to be? What made us be like this? To be silent, scared, nonexistent at times? I can’t seem to grasp the fact of being so stuck in the box made by humankind. 

We. 

We are the ones that created the „rules“. Society is nothing more than air. It exists, we breathe it, but we can’t touch it nor shape it. It is there, already made, shaped, and existent. It is moving, like a wind, but I can’t do anything to move it, to make even the slightest movement. 

Why? 

I wonder, all the time. But nothing comes to my mind. 

- Are you okay? 

- Nothing...

...comes to my mind. What a shame... This game. So full of life, but still nothing more than just a game with players and rules and brawls and agreements and relationships. Come to think of it, maybe I am able to do something? Maybe I can make RAIN! 

NO – is all I hear. – You can’t! – But they are mistaken, they, who silently play the board game set on the ground. My eyes look towards the sky, theirs towards the ground. If anyone was to make a rain it would be me – the one looking at the sky, not the one looking down on the board game that is just a part of life. 

- You are really something, aren’t you? So silent, and distant. I sometimes believe like you don’t think at all! 

- Just life... 

... being what we think it is and not actually knowing what is behind all of this. 

Who are we? We, who think we are as big as the moon but fragile and small compared to the universe. Who are we? A spark of light? A grain of salt, sand, dust? 

Nothing. 

That is what we are.

Or not?

Perspective. 

It all comes to perspective. The way we see, the way we look, the way we search...

10 seconds. That is what we need. Time. We always need time. „Only if I had just a bit more time...“. Over and over. 

Again. 

We decided the time. It didn’t come with the package of being a being. 

Us.

Created from nature, from something. Us beings discovered the time, why not change it?

I am babbling now... we had the lungs from the start but first humans didn’t know about it. Maybe the time existed anyway, and we just found it. 

But it is still irrelevant.

Why? 

Try to count every grain of sand on Earth. You can’t. Think of grains of sand as the expansion of the universe, unimaginable. 

      Then, what we count as time, somewhere in the universe doesn’t exist in the same manner. Different, yes, but even more than different! That is the same with us, humans. 

      - Hm, let’s break the silence! What is the thing in the world that you cherish the most? 

      - Seconds. 10 seconds...

      ...are everything and at the same time nothing. Humans are something and nothing. Everything is something and nothing. It depends on the perspective, as I have already said. 

      The 10 seconds passed... and we ignored it. We didn’t think of it, and much has been done in the same 10 seconds. 

      The bullet was fired.

      The first breath was taken.

      Life was ended. 

      Life was starting. 

      Around and around. Over and over again. In the same 10 seconds someone fell out of love, someone fell in love; someone lost patience and someone got back the hope; someone kissed goodbye, someone kissed hello; someone woke up, someone fell asleep; someone got up and someone fell down. 

A huge circle. A clock on the wall. A planet. Everything goes around and nothing ever stops, not even does those 10 seconds. 

How? 10 seconds were; we can’t go back in time? But, another 10 seconds come, and then another... and around and around. 

- Interesting... Is there something else?

- No, I don’t think so. Everything I cherish the most is within those 10 seconds...

...everything and nothing. Here I go again. And I won’t stop. Because as much as those 10 seconds are huge they are also very fragile and sometimes nonexistent. They fly so high, so fast, that we, sometimes, don’t even notice them, like there are non. But still, they make those 24 hours, they make a day, a month, a year, an eternity of life.

The smallest things make bigger things. Once again, a grain of sand. What is that other than something so small that you don’t even see it?! But it makes those beautiful beaches we like, it is used for concrete so we could make buildings, our homes, where we live.  

Just another proof that we are nothing and yet something. 

- Could you be more specific? I would like to know more about you, Melanie...? 

- Specific... Hmm, I don’t know how to explain it... 

...Other than „just two words“, „ten seconds“. There is something so special about that number, that specific number and I can’t put my finger on it... Yeah, literally... The time, as I said, is nonexistent, like the words we say. Just the waves traveling through the air. Physics. Meaning. Words, like seconds, like time, is what we make of them. What we think of it. What meaning we are giving it. The meaning is what makes us, and... what brakes us. 

10 seconds. – we become or we disappear; we say hello or we say goodbye...  

      - Hey? Who are you talking to?

      - Melanie, my friend! Say hello to her!

      - Um there is no one there... 

      - What?

      I am the time. I am the 10 seconds.