"Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."
If you understand this thought--then you will be able to walk the labyrinth. But how will this quote allow you to walk the labyrinth of your lives, your current situation?
And remember Milosz,
"I, for unknown reasons
surrounded by the books...
Searched for an answer
scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn"
Good luck--this might appear to be challenging but it is not. Just remember something else Borges said, "Nothing is built on stone, all is built in sand--but we must build as if the sand were stone."
See you Monday.
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"Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."
I believe that this quote is revealing the power an indiviudal has over theirself. Although many people blame time for passing too quickly, instead, the person is in charge of what happens during their brief time (I am the river). Though the time passing is out of one's control, that is no excuse to continue to be in charge of your actions and life and to live thoughtfully and deliberately while you do have time.
Although people can complain that outside forces can "devour" or "consume" them, this quote says, "but I am the tiger" (that devours)and "but I am the fire" (that consumes). Although outside forces are acting upon an individual constantly, it is the indivdual that allows themself to be devoured or consumed by their own mind instead of reacting to the outside forces appropriately. Ultimately, the individual can surpass outside forces, no matter how strong, if they realize that they are in charge of their life.
"Nothing is built on stone, all is built in sand-but we must build as if the sand were stone"
This quote reminds me of the scene in The Alchemist when the caravan leader is instructing Santiago on how to live in the present. Although nothing is 'set in stone' or permanent, we cannot live everyday assuming that everything is temporary, or we won't live out our full potential and contribute to our own and each other's lives in as significant ways. Instead, we must know that nothing is permanent, but act, make decisions, and live as if everything is eternal. This is very similar to the idea of living in the present, because instead of living worrying about what will come later, after the present temporary fixture disentegrates, we instead will focus on the moment at hand.
I am nothing but time. My life began and it will end; all that is in between is time. “Time is a river” and I float downstream until death for there is no upstream, no way to get back to my birth. And while time is that river, that river is my as well because only I can float my self downstream. It is no one’s task but mine to continually turn the hourglass to keep sand flowing until my death. As I am composed of time, we are one in the same. Yet we are different. I can be nothing but myself and neither can time. There is, however, an unbreakable, indestructible, unburnable bridge that forever secures my life to time. Due to this bridge, I am in control of time as it is of me: “a fire…consumes me, but I am the fire”. I choose the path I walk and how time serves me. At the same time, time is unchangeable. It is like the sun’s light on earth: It does not cycle like nutrients but rather passes through in a single direction.
I cannot be a tiger carried by a river. This would be impossible. Under these circumstances, I would lose all control in my life. Rather, I choose to enter my labyrinth understanding where I began and what walls are weaker than others. Venturing into my current life, I know the only truths that matter to me: I am me and I am here. Nothing, not even I, can change that. I will always hope for everlasting happiness (ever since October 14th anyways) and suffer weak ankles and wrists. I will forever hate time and cherish sunrise ever more so than sunset. This is who I am and who I will always be. More reluctantly, I face the truth that I am here in this labyrinth I call my life. I am not one who easily lets go. I do not quickly forget my mistakes or forgive myself for faults. Also, I struggle at times to not dream of future accomplishments, a future home, a future life. Hesitantly, I choose to live now. For me this is not easily done and often I fail to focus on the moment. Because time and I control each other, I must live in the present for that is all I have. I cannot dwell nor dream for it is only wasted time; time that I have no right to throw away.
Others may exist as pressures to bend me to their will. For years I have done so willingly as I collapse at their feet in humbleness. I can no longer use my past to guide my present. I must forget and start anew. Like the tiger who devours himself, I must accept a responsibility I’ve long set aside and take control of my being, my time, and also allow time to control me. I know now there is no future. There are only the present actions people take and thoughts they make, which immediately lead into another set of present actions and thoughts. To walk the labyrinth of my life, my current situation, I must understand the past is not relevant and the future does not exist. It is only through focuses on my present life that I will find my way through this labyrinth, maybe break some walls of sand, and then exit only to find another awaiting me.
"Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."
I would have to agree with Frankie on the first quote. I agree with her that is truly mind over matter. “Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along.” I believe each one of these lines is one step father to conquering yourself, versus someone else conquering you. Time is the first, step that pushes one along to the river, once at the river are pushed father. The tiger is one’s own inner being pushing one’s own mind and matter. By letting one’s own mind take over and control you are allowing for your own ideas and morals to come to life. With each one of these steps, the person has full control of what is going to occur, it is just up to them to make sure they push themselves far enough to achieve their own goal or as Coelho says Personal Legend.
By following this quote, walking the labyrinth will become easier in respect to our own goals. We know ourselves the best, and we know what we truly want to do in our hearts, so by following our own path in life, we will be able to overcome this obstacle and triumph the pressure of the outside of the people surrounding us. However if we listen to others, we no longer become the tiger and we no longer can carry ourselves along the river, we will be overpowered by all of these obstacles.
I believe the final line, “it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire,” stands for the passion within us. Fire spreads quickly and overtakes anything in its path. By believing in our own enthusiasm, we will takeover ourselves in a positive light. Ignoring anyone else’s fire will allow us to see our own and not obsess and focus on anyone else’s which is one of the first steps to conquering one’s self.
"Nothing is built on stone, all is built in sand--but we must build as if the sand were stone."
Sand is the building block of a stone. The tiny grains of sand were once part of a stone. Everythign can be traced back to one single source. However, we must build ourselves as if we were sand, because we too were once part of the stone, and have chipped off as our own individual grains of sand.
"Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."
With time we evolve and shape ourselves as we want to become, with time we learn and experience new things. As human beings i believe we are quite currious abotu our surroundings, and the life around us. We are intrigued about human nature and the powers we have in ourself. We want to find our inner being like a tiger or fire that devours me, and consumes me.
“Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger, it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.”
This quote follows the same idea that it is not the spoon that bends it is only thyself that bends.
“Time is the substance from which I am made”, through time and the experiences one has shapes one. These experiences compose one’s self, but “I am the river”, one is the experiences. These experiences shape one as a person, but also carry one through time. But time is only a factor that one created for him or herself.
“It is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger”, one is one’s own worse enemy. This is especially true in seeing one’s flaws that no one else sees, or making a mistake that is not as big a deal that one makes it. Everyone is their own tiger, their own worse enemy. Fear is an inner emotion that is as strong as a tiger in taking one down. Fear puts up a fight within one’s self, and it is only the strength of the soul that can undermine the tiger, fear.
“It is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire”, this fire is burning internally, and it is only thyself that fuels this fire with emotion. Emotions such as anger and jealously, both of which internally can burn one’s soul. These emotions if not expressed, simply add more fuel to the fire, and if never extinguished with communication they can burn through one’s true soul. It is only thyself that builds, and fuels this fire. It is not the world, it is not human, or another living thing, it is only the reactions of thyself to the world around us. If one chooses not to be bothered or not to care, then there will be no fire, no flame. Why don’t we all extinguish that flame? Or is it impossible?
This quote made me examine my life in a differant light. I am a true believer in fate, especially after reading the Alchemist, so I don't nessicarly agree with this statment even though it is quite powerful. My interpration of the quote is similar to that of Frankie's. Our lives are like rivers, forever floating onward with the current. But the quote reminds us that we are in control of our own lifes and destiny.
I do not believe in this concept because I am certian that we are not in control of our own lives. The people that come and go, and the experiances that we are faced with are what define our lives. Though some people and choices are deliberate, some are unplanned. If we were in complete control of our lives.
The quote also made me question the value of human nature. If it is human nature to make mistakes, and if we are infact in control of our own lives does that mean ever mistake we make is our fault. Therefore, can we blame human nature or should we blame ourselves?
Time is the substance from which I am made.
The one thing everyone in world has is time. It varies in amount from person to person, but everyone has at least a handful of seconds. It is how we choose to spend our time that makes us who we are.
Time is the river which carries me along, but I am the river.
Time traces the course of our lives. It is a constant, and it pushes us from task to task without ever pausing. We can look back upon it, we can live within it, and we can prophesize and hope about where it will go next, but we can’t get away from it.
When I read this quote, I took out a photo album and flipped through the pages. I saw my mom laying, exhausted, in a hospital bed, holding a very tiny me. I saw my sisters and I on towel by an anonymous pool on some forgotten summer day, eating watermelon and grinning toothlessly at the camera. I saw my first boyfriend standing awkwardly next to me in front of a Christmas tree before my first semi-formal, both of us dying to leave as quickly as possible. These pictures are frozen glimpses of time, but time kept moving. Time is the river, but we are time. We lived these memories and we can look over our shoulder from time to time, but try as we might, we can’t actually fight the current and back paddle.
It is the tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger.
Regret is time in killing form. We look back on what we wish we could have done, but we can’t change it. We would have, should have, could have, but we can’t. What’s done is done, and it can’t be returned to. The best we can do is close our eyes and try to envision our lives rewritten, playing out as they could have if we’d seen the stop sign, if we‘d turned left instead of right, if we’d given a second thought to hanging up the phone. Still, though, we can’t help wondering. What could have been different? Where would I be right now, and who would I be here with? It is these thoughts that devour us, even if we don’t want them to. Anytime we hold up our hands in surrender and profess that we hold onto “no regrets”, we are regretting. If there was nothing to regret, there would be no need to make that assertion in he first place.
We linger over what might happen next as much as we do over what already has. We plan, schedule, organize, and hope, but time is usually a bit wiser. We do everything we can to pass the test tomorrow, to get into college five months from now, to marry the right person in ten years. We wish and pray but time has other plans, and it drives us insane. We have our tarot cards read and we analyze the lines on our palms and the topography of our faces, but we still have no idea what’s coming next. We are in complete control over this. Time might devour us, but we are time. We devour ourselves. We are the tiger.
It is the fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
Time is all around us. It is beneath our feet, over our shoulders, and inside our stomachs. We think in terms of time, instead of distance, saying that we live forty minutes from school or about fifteen minutes from the mall, instead of twenty miles or twelve kilometers. We didn’t write two papers and study for a French test last night, we did six hours of homework. We need to be back for curfew in twenty minutes, at our doctor’s appointment in an hour, starting our diet in a day. We are late for school at 8:16 simply because that is how things are. This paper is due in two days but the calc test was easy, it only took half an hour. There are seven days in a week, fifty-two weeks in a year, and a hundred years in a century. We might live to be a hundred an two, but we could have a heart attack in five hours.
Everything about our lives is dictated by time. We can’t escape it, because it is always there. Time cannot be turned on. Daylight savings can toss it around a bit, but even that plays with our sensibilities and throws off. We have biological clocks and internal alarms and menstrual cycles that dictate how our bodies work without giving us a say in the matter. Time is within is and around us, but we are still ourselves. Time is a part of us, and we feed it and let it burn as much as we do any other part of our lives.
"Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river”
Time is truly the only constant in my life. It is the only thing that has always been there for me to count on, through every single moment. If ever there is a certain situation that I don’t think I can make it through, all I need to do is wait for time to pass. In reality though, the idea of time is so abstract. Time is nothing real at all. It is merely man’s way of trying to measure and put some sort of legitimate value to the passing of life. In waiting for the letter from my first choice school to arrive, I count the days to comfort myself, but in reality that isn’t what’s keeping me calm. I am keeping myself calm. Time cannot comfort. Time has no feelings, no goals, and no motives. Whatever credit I give to time for comforting me, should be given to myself.
“it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger;”
Tigers are known for being aggressive, territorial animals with sharp and painful bites. I have realized recently that often the words I shoot out in defense of myself, only truly hurt me. When attacked, I always retaliate so I have never been one to keep quiet and walk away from confrontations. This part of who I am is what devours me. I tend to get so caught up in defending myself from other people that I am no longer able to focus on what really matters, the other people in my life who I care about. My relationships with good friends start to slip when I begin to focus all of my energy towards whomever I am fighting at the current time. This part of me, this part of who I am, it what devours me. It isolates me; I isolate myself.
“it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.”
Sometimes my own goals, desires, and ambitions are what ruin me. When I set a goal for myself, I tend to become obsessive towards meeting it. I truly am the fire that consumes me. When I become entirely consumed by my own goals and ideas, and when success is not met, the fall to failure is hard and painful. By the time of the fall, I have nothing left to hold me up, because for so long I was relying solely on that goal.
"Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."
This quote shows how truly in control an individual is of their own life. It clearly shows how no matter what the individuals fate become, it can always be traced back to the decisions that individual made in their lifetime. Time is a constant in anyone's life and yet it is the individual who decides what to do with that time. We can except the walls that are built up around us from birth or we can choose to see the truth. The truth lies in the realization that those wall are not there. They are not real and so are easily demolished. This quote explains that the decision is yours. Whether or not you chose to break down the walls that box you in or learn to bend yourself in order to live within them is completely in your hands.
"Nothing is built on stone, all is built in sand-but we must build as if the sand were stone"
This quote bring clearly to my mind a part in The Alchemist when Santiago is being instructed on how to understand the desert.
"You don't have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation.
I believe that what both of the quote are trying to convey is that humans tend to try and understand to much at a time. We need to simplify in order to understand that nothing is set in stone. If we make decisions simply in the present and not worry about the irrelevant past and the future to come. The present is like a grain of sand that builds the stone future. If we consider the present alone we can assure ourselves a future completely created by our own decisions.
"Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."
Time controls many of us, it controls every aspect of our lives. It tells us when to sleep, when to eat, when to go to school and when to talk online to friends. It makes our days become crammed because we book lots of appointments in a short time. It causes people to become stressed and worried about making their next appointment or getting an assignment handed in on time. Time is in its own way an addiction, ask any person who looks at their watch what the time is and they will have to look again. Tim forces men and women to live their lives entirely based on the planner, clock, and calendar looking ahead in the future instead of living for just that day. It becomes unhealthy when a person worries about an assignment that is due in two weeks instead of enjoying the day for what it is worth.
Every person is the river, the river always moved down gradually with the current. The river is in my opinion complacency, a person can just keep riding it until they die or they have the option to fight against time and get off the river. Because everyone who does not fight against time and try to accomplish a great deal of goals in their life will just be sucked down and down by the current. The river is just an obstacle to overcome, it is a wall that every man and woman must face on their own. By overcoming the river and fighting against time we are able to not be bogged down with our planners, calendars and appointments. By fighting against the river we are able to live our lives free from time.
I live by the clock, I have been engulfed by time. I have to be at school at 8:15, meaning I have to shower at 7, meaning I have to have breakfast at 6:45, then I have to be at the pool at 3:45 sharp. If I choose to leave the river, to break the cycle, I will get in trouble, but by leaving the river I will be able to live my life the way it was meant to be. With no time constraints, no worries and no doubts. That detention from Smith for being late would be no problem nor would that expulsion from my swim team for not showing up to practice. I know personally I will never be able to leave the river, because I like living my life by the clock, I like planners and commitments. I like discipline, appointments and punishments for not making appointments.
I can not stop the fire of time, it has already been lit within me. It is just burning and burning and burning, there is no way to extinguish time for it is always constant. I am that fire because I allowed myself to be possessed by time, I allow it to be my apart of everything I do and I embrace it. I have allowed time to structure my life, I have allowed it to add discipline. I allow time to be a consuming fire, I enjoy watching my commitments engulf me because I believe that I am my commitments. I made the choice to sacrifice all my free time with swimming and homework when I could easily have quite both but I didn’t. By forcing myself to rely on time as a manager I have found that it has shaped me into who I am today, I am happy time has engulfed me, I can’t see myself in any other way.
Time is the substance from which I am made.
As the seconds tick by I am constantly growing and learning. If all of the experiences I have make me grow a little taller it would make sense that most of my growing happens as an infant and through my teenage years. Past high school and college years, learning seems to lose importance, and you stop growing, thinking you have all the substance you need. But in time we learn that we don’t know everything and we will never know everything.
Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river;
Time carries us along the river, the river is our journey to find perhaps our Personal Legend. But I am the river meaning that I create my journey, the ups and downs, and twists and turns. At Points my river will cross others, this is where we meet people and our paths may join or spilt apart shortly after. Time is the force of the current propelling me forward, fighting the current is trying to relive the past, I’m only able to look back upon it and learn from it. At the heights in our journey we want time to freeze wishing we could live in the moment forever, at the worst of times we wish time would speed up getting us to the end of the river faster. But time neither speeds up nor slows down for us.
It is the tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger.
The tiger is fear, self-doubt, self-consciousness, anger, jealously and hate, I spend far too much of my time letting these traits devour me. If I allow these feelings to eat away at me they will, in time, engulf me. I find that I can either try to tame the tiger, the time, by setting a schedule that will allow for me to maximize the hours in a day. Creating a robotic effect to my live. I wake up well before the rise of the sun, spend most of my day in a building, when I leave the building the sun is beginning to set and I still have hours of homework that needs to be done. Or I can set this tiger free, doing only what I have time for in a day. Living without the constant rush and with the rise and fall of the sun.
It is the fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
Fires will grow exponentially given the right conditions, its inescapable. Because the fire has consumed the world I can’t help but join the fire. Time is the fire that consumes me; I’m unable to live as an outsider to time so I too must spark a flame. When we are enveloped by time our lives become routine walking aimlessly from one block of time to the next. Thinking of the actually seconds ticking from the clock and not the quality in which we spend our time.
From this quote, it is clear that in order to achieve success when I dive into the labyrinth that I have to own the path that I create for myself. I interpret this as the perfect combination between fate and freewill; this is how I see fate. There is a path, but I am meant to design it, there are failures but I, in turn, create them and am then consumed by my own fire. It is my fate to follow my own river in order to reach its end, my designated destination. But this destination is crafted by me, if I say something is to be my fate, then it will be, my only job then is to follow the omens, sneak past the tigers, and become inflammable. I recognize that I will always have control, but time determines how long I have to exercise it. It is difficult however, to harness this power. Most of the times I feel as though I am wasting it, by letting external forces become the tiger, the fire, and especially the river. I have let this power begin to dissolve as I ignore it, letting my parents win the arguments just so I don’t have to deal with it, consciously knowing that the society around me is always molding me, and watching days pass by where I simply follow a routine with little, to no fluctuations.
Upon reading The Alchemist however, something changed. I began to act for myself, made necessary and somewhat drastic adjustments (although they may seem rather small in the future) to my previously bland days and began to actively seek out my personal legend. Everyday I am thinking about the future but I now do so by remaining in the present. By residing in the present, I am able to work towards regaining the power that is entitled to me and only me; the ability to be my river. If I can carve out every twist and turn and remain balanced through every current, then the rest will come easily. The tiger and the fire will have purpose, giving poignancy to every moment and gratitude with every success. It is my fate to reach this point, what I wrote in the inside cover of The Alchemist on October the 14th was “to be satisfied with my existence and have pride in my accomplishments.” Reading The Alchemist was a perfect primer for my introduction to Borges Labyrinth, it defined the threshold I am meant to cross. It will take a long time to reach my goal and I know I will remain in the labyrinth for a while and perhaps I have been there for sometime already. What is different now is that I can see it with more definition, and what I want in the future is beginning to come into focus.
But I need to feel confident about no longer wasting my days. If “time is the substance from which I am made” then I must have some way to manipulate it, I can’t change its pattern but I can give meaning to it.
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