It takes time
Photo Credit: Eunice Teo
It takes time.
Plenty of it.
Some times it feels like a lot. Some times it feels too much. But no matter how we perceive it, everything takes time.
Time is the prerequisite to all that we do and all that we seek.
We may buy ways to do more at the same time, or buy the time of others to make up for it.
We may also simply buy other’s time, who may give in return, something of value – something to make our time spent worth it.
Because time is fleeting. It is like an hourglass with sand you cannot perceive – only glimpses of when it might run out.
So scary is this unknown that some try to cheat it. With a lineage of tales and tricks as long as humanity itself, we try to elongate it because regardless of whether we have found what we are living for, we demand more time. Poetically, because it is a process that takes time.
I have come to this realization that I am perhaps at the cusp of a newfound appreciation for time and process. This is perhaps a result of my eight months working on a documentary series featuring five incredible characters with a collective life experience of nearly 300 years.
At 28 year old, I had barely begun to live life – but even for the most adventurous, there are so many ways to see life, and one lifetime is not enough. And so, producing documentaries is a career that can allow me to live life, vicariously through other lifetimes – and become a better person, I hope.
And with life comes serendipity, a fact of life that I try my best to clarify when curious few would ask me how I choose my documentary subjects. I have never been in such a position. Every documentary that I had produced was laid upon me by circumstances, the only thing I chose was whether to grasp it. With an ironic mix of ambition and pragmatism, I grab as many as I can, so long as I can do justice to them. I can never know the result beforehand, but I do know when I cannot give my best.
And this is where the conundrum starts to grow ever stronger. Through continued luck and recognition, I am in a position to take hold of new, bigger and ever more exciting opportunities. But they take more out of me, and they take more time.
It is time that I find more difficult to give with each passing year. When I started this documentary journey eight years ago, it was with a definite, life-long aspiration to create a career prospect that suits my innate talent so that it is easier for me to work hard and earn the conditions needed to spend more time and worry less with my future family and children. That north star remains constant.
It will be two years before my wife and I are moving into our first home, and while I would grade my progress as decent, it feels like a fluke. It is difficult to define it, but perhaps allow me to describe it.
I started this journey because I chanced upon a beautiful horizon, but like all horizons – it is an illusion of endless possibilities. As I work towards it, I feel both closer yet away from it at the same time.
On bad days it is a demoralizing outlook, tempting me to question the meaning of all the effort to seek what cannot be reached.
Yet on fair days, it pulls me – a horizon that is unblemished by the state of reality, no matter how chaotic or grim.
I write this reflection tonight because my latest documentary work is about time. And it is also about patience. There is something about the old adage that the journey is more important than the destination. It is cliché, but perhaps I had discounted it without realizing its truth.
That is the gift of a documentary – to experience the life of others, and in doing so, learn to live one’s own life better.
To the horizon, we go.
