Dear Chance,
Thank you for your letter postmarked October 29. I’m grateful to have received it.
While it goes without saying that my eternal purpose takes me anywhere and everywhere on some semblance of a schedule, I am, on occasion, quite happy to do things at my leisure. Like, write you back, for example.
Rest assured that my reply wasn’t provoked by anything you’ve said. Compared to my contemporaries, I actually get very little mail. Had any of them been a tad more receptive—open to dialogue, shall we say—I believe I would’ve gotten in touch. But I’ve learned that people often just need to rage. (People can be frightfully angry, as you know. And anger is the most complex of armor, all sadness inside and softness underneath.) I’ve also learned that raging is a Mack truck; you give it a wide berth.
That said, getting a letter from Time would only open old wounds, don’t you think? As efficient as I am, I dislike being needlessly cruel. That’s why silence has always been my response of choice. I don’t think I’ve ever been called out on it before. Until you, of course.
Your advice to “pull myself together” suggests that I’ve been compromised in some way, allowing for inappropriate and unreasonable actions on my part. I’d like to reassure you that I haven’t been derelict in my duties. But your concern for a job well done is something I can definitely relate to.
I regret that I don’t remember any of those instances you mentioned, at least not specifically. My work is cyclical in nature. Time is happening constantly, you see, and things tend to happen over and over again where I’m concerned. It was how I was built and how I came to be.
I existed prior to Anno mundi. I remember when the world first woke up from sleep, when the world was only a seed in the darkness, when the darkness itself was a dot, and even before that.
For a while, I thought I was simply watching things happen, when, in fact, I was happening to them. Did I make them happen, you ask? Was I the cause? Oh, no. No, no, no. I fear I can’t own such an immense responsibility.
For that, you should have written a letter to Life, or Death, maybe to Disease, or War, even to Nature, or Free Will. Some people talk to their God, and I’ve heard that their prayers are answered consistently enough. So that’s someone else you can write, if you’re so inclined.
To be honest, I’m more like your average everyday guide. A herald to the next step in a sequence of steps that must run its natural course. A flower must bloom as it must wilt, but it never does so all at once, and hardly in isolation. Everything is happening to everything. And Time is only one of those things.
I know this subject can be a bit much. Shall I continue?
When I became conscious, I didn’t care about having a name. But people need to name things to make sense of them, apparently, and so I became Time, and telling time became my job. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy what I do. I do what I do like what I’ve always done, because that’s by design.
About human language—you must understand that it’s at the mercy of whimsy and caprice. Most expressions that allude to me rarely capture the enormity of my work. If I seem inconsistent to people, it’s only because Time happens to them at different stages. A person’s journey is his own; his pace is unique.
So in terms of thievery and inconsistency, I do maintain my innocence. And the chaos you’ve said I’ve engendered? I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. Chaos is War’s sister, but she also goes by the name of Order. They’re one and the same; just two sides of the same coin. I could introduce you if that’s something you’d like.
I was walking on the street one day in my human form, and the one thing I noticed is that people these days hardly look at one another. They’re always in a hurry to be somewhere else, so I doubt they’d recognize who was in front of them, even if it was Death herself.
Chance, you seem to have lived among people for a very, very long time to be so versed in their ways, and so sympathetic to their cause. You remind me of that missing foundling, the source of that silly human phrase, “I lost my chance.”
But perhaps the missing are found, after all. Perhaps.
My reply is so much longer than your missive now, I think, and I hope that you’re still with me.
One last thing. Have you ever come across Ecclesiastes 9:11? I’m rather charmed by it, even if I have no religious affiliations whatsoever.
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but Time and Chance happeneth to them all.”
I will forgive your impertinence, if you forgive mine. Possibly, maybe, we should meet.
Yours truly,
Time