The Melting Clocks
Salvador Dali is among the most versatile and prolific artists of the twentieth century. He is perhaps best known for his 1931 painting The Persistence of Memory, showing melting clocks in a landscape setting.While we cannot know for certain the true meaning, interpretation or analysis that Dali himself intended for his painting, I will, however, want to explain two of the assumptions about the meaning of the melting clocks that are most striking and most relevant to the subject of time management.
The first assumption; It is said that the painting conveys several ideas within the image, chiefly that time is not rigid and everything is destructible. I want you to pay attention to this line “Time is not rigid” It is destructible. It melts away before you know it. This is exactly what I have been trying to get across to you from the beginning of this time series. The idea that time melts and vanishes whether we like it or not is what the melting clocks of Salvador Dali depict. I have said before that as time diminishes, life diminishes alongside.
In agreement with the first assumption of the melting clocks, I want to state at this point that nothing is stable in life including life itself. Everything diminishes and everything is destructible. Since everything is destructible including life, you should, therefore, make the best out of life while it lasts. The only way to get the best out of the diminishing life is to invest it into the fulfillment of your purpose.
To invest your life, you must invest your time and make sure it doesn’t just melt away like Salvador Dali’s melting clock. The thought that your time and your life will melt away should create a sense of urgency to do something of worth with it before it all melts away.
If you are given twenty-four hours of your life every day to do something with it, what would you do with it before it melts in the evening? Sadly so many people stand and watch their life melt away every day without taking advantage of it to produce something of worth. This refusal to convert this melting life into a product happens repeatedly for fifty, sixty or maybe seventy years of a man’s life after which he dies with nothing left to benefit the next generation. What a waste of precious life! A life that could have been used to positively impact humanity is allowed to melt away into vanity.
The tragedy of life is that it comes just once and before you know it, it is gone. Since life comes just once, I encourage you to give it your best shot. I dare you to maximize your life. You can create the best out of your life by understanding the wealth of time and converting that time into the life that you were created to live. I mean to say convert your time into fulfilling your purpose. I will reiterate; the best way to convert your time into products is through the power of solitude. Do not watch your life melt away just like that for life is too precious to waste it doing nothing.
The second assumption; others believe that the melting and distorted clocks symbolize the erratic passage of time that we experience while dreaming.
THE PROBLEMS WITH DREAMS
I find the second assumption of the melting clocks fascinating because it depicts the actual state of a majority of people on the earth. The tragedy of our age is that a greater percentage of people living today are only living in the dream world. Have you ever woken up from a dream and expected it to be still the middle of the night and are surprised to find that it is already morning? That is the realm in which most people live their lives; the realm of dreams.
Everyone dreams of greatness and expects it to happen in the future automatically. The problem with these dreams is that they are always futuristic and gives a deceptive impression that there is still enough time to actualize them. The tragedy, however, is that you soon realize that the time you thought you had to fulfill the dreams had melted away before your very eyes. You suddenly come to terms with the reality that you are now sixty or seventy years old but did none of the things you dreamt you were going to do. The only thing you can do with the dreams when you realize it’s already morning is to regret wasting your life while you had all the time. You only regret not converting time into fulfilling your dreams while you had the time. That is not the kind of life you should live.
“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”
Greatness is never achieved in the realm of dreams but in the realm of reality and the only way to achieving that greatness is to convert your time into added value to yourself and then to others. Your dream will only benefit humanity when you make it tangible by living it out. You are only great to the degree you impacted others with your life. Take hold of your passing time and convert it into living your dreams. Only then can you truly fulfill the great destiny that you were called to fulfill.
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