Tick tock

Subject: Tick tock 

The clock is ticking, it's always ticking, tick tock as we pursue our latest interest or gain pleasure from our lassitude. It's as inevitable as the tide, this slippage of time, each second lost, wasted gone for ever. 
It's interesting the phenomena of time passing, what came before the moment of the 'now' and what the further moment will be. Waiting for the bus, getting on board and then your stop arrives and the bus departs as if you had never been. Was there ever another bus to catch or another destination, or were we condemned to catch the only one which would take our ticket. 
Depending on where you were born and into which segment of society your parents belonged was the determinant of where you were going. The route pretty much laid out we succumbed to what our role prescribed and thankfully we're pretty much isolated from the alternatives. The rice planter in China, the herdsmen in Kenya, the car worker in Michigan, each chosen to carry out the task of earning enough to buy the bread to put on the table. The task of staying alive is the hope and destination of all of us and whilst we may assume our own individuality we are nothing much more than members of the herd, mere followers, hoping to fit in,  craving acceptance from the man next door. 
Tick tock the clock moves on, un-beholden to your condition or frame of mind, and there is the rub, time and mind, two incompatible foes, the one projecting into the future the other the bookkeeper of the past. 
Tick tock, how many tick tock's have we heard without realising their significance perhaps  this is a blessing since if we were consumed to live every moment as if it were our last, what a burden that would be. Instead there's the optimism that there's more to come, more to squander.
Tick tock, tick tock, better to ignore the platitudes of the 'good life' if there is no real substance to this one. 

Ah, make the most of what we may yet spend 
Before we too under dust descend 
Dust into dust, and under dust lie 
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, sans end.