Time is of vital importance in life. It is transient and yet can be quantified in terms of days, months and years. I was always intrigued by this phrase and wanted to write about it. The phrase can be traced back to the English Common Law and the Legal System. Also there are so many ways of expressing the phrase. For instance, Time and tide wait for no man, The clock is clicking, Time is slipping away, and to quote Shakespeare's, Richard the IInd, "I have wasted time and now doth Time waste me". If you mean, time is of essence or of importance in relation to your actions, you are bound by a contract, so to speak, and you need to finish the task in hand soon. Doctors for instance, if they have to save a person's life, they need to operate right then and cannot afford any delay. In a legal context also, time is a critical factor, where the parties involved must complete the obligations on a given time frame. In other words timing is material to the performance of the contract. Further, in a relationship, love is of the essence or in other words a relationship will flourish if we give more of our time to the others and make them feel wanted and the opposite is also true. Here I would like to include the song by the group Wham, titled "Careless Whispers", where they say, "time can never mend, careless whispers of a good friend..."which I find is appropriate here. Time at large however is just the opposite, where you are not required to finish a task within a stipulated period of time and speed is not of essence. Lets now talk about, the essence of life or what you want to achieve in the span of your lifetime. In simplest of terms, the essence of time in your life can dictate what you want to do or how you want to achieve the " Absolute Truth" of your existence. You may have your own preferences and maybe driven by what can make your life meaningful or destructive depending on the circumstances faced. It is upto your sagacity and intelligence in how you treat this essence of life and steer it away from repression or loss of this vital energy. This loss can lead to the blurring of your very existence and can lead to the destruction of all that is positive. What is really the meaning of this often used word, essence? The Oxford dictionary describes it as, the basic or primary element in the being of a thing, the thing's nature or that without which it could not be what it is. Further, the Aristotelian meaning for the word essence reads as follows, "substance of a thing is its essence which makes it what it is". Time is indispensable and we are inspired by time. Time is Money (Benjamin Franklin), and the following quote by Harvey Mackay, emphasizes the importance of Time beautifully. "Time is free but it's priceless, you can't own it, but you can use it, you can't keep it but you can spend it. Once you have lost it you can never get it back." Time is valuable, and this is just what M. Scott Peck is saying and I quote,"Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it." In the final analysis, time is of the essence is, when something is absolutely necessary for a particular action to be successful.
