Here, there is no credit. No debt. A man can’t beg, borrow, or steal to get more. In this currency, there is no buying on margin. What he spends is gone, forever. And years later he might look back and regret the purchase, but it's always too late.
Not one single second can be returned. There are times I think of the past and can’t help but cringe. A memory I wish could be taken back. The word spoken in a room of people that, once released, is poison. It spreads throughout the room, a deadly wisp of smoke dispersing before the gaze of its dismayed observers. No amount of rewinding, editing, or revising can ever reverse what has been done. Precious moments, unchanged to the end of time. Thieves, they seem. But many businessmen appear thieves. These seconds, ticked off one by one, deal justly, by the book one might say. Cold to the touch and impersonal, Father Time gives no second chances.
I sit here quietly as my mind runs, reminiscing, remembering. A ship sailing briskly with the wind at its rudder, visiting ports and cities of ages past until, without warning, the ship runs aground on previously unseen bitterness. The trap set by my heart to bring yesterday’s foolishness back into today’s theater. I ponder my part. I ponder my words, my actions, my motives. And I regret, to no avail. I reopen a bill paid long ago. I nickel and dime myself for no reason, running up the bill more than I had ever anticipated.
Time is not the thief, but regret. What man can change any one thing he has already released to time? And would he even want to? Would any of us, removed as far from the past as today, change anything that has already run its course? Who would want to bear time past’s pain a second time?
Regret takes a man’s gaze away from the pain that has defined him and inappropriately places it on pain that now has freedom to haunt him. What is past, what time has sealed, defines each and every one of us. I refuse to be a man of sorrow. In time, I hope to become a man of grace. And when the father looks at my bill, he sees that very thing. Grace. He does not overlook my faults, my mistakes, or my pride. There is no need. For He no longer sees them. He sees a blank receipt. The bill that, in my mind, I continue to add to has been permanently transferred to a separate, off-shore account that the court will never see.
And if the court will never see it, why be bound by it? When my focus remains on the past, on my regret, and on my sin I will remain in bondage. But the truth, now that sets a man free.
