Thump. Thump.

My body degrades, slowly. I can feel something inside my chest pounding. My heart beat faster in my infancy, however, now it toils laboriously as though each beat requires tremendous effort. Thump. Thump. It seems to count each tick, tallying them on my anterior coronary artery. Every so often I will count out 50, maybe 100 just to marvel at how quickly the time passes. I know that mine has a specific number, all of our heart’s do. Yet, the bible commands us to “not be anxious about tomorrow” so I try to convince myself not to despair (Matthew 6:34). Therefore, I force myself not to focus on the inevitable countdown occurring within my chest.

Time never stops. Likewise, humans cannot manipulate or alter time, for it keeps on keeping on with utter disregard for the misery or ecstasy it causes. Time has a countdown for every event, moment, and happening. The second-hand will eventually approach every occurrence and will not halt, or pause, one second prior to the onset but rather continue it’s accumulation of beats with blissful ignorance. The second hand, unlike that of the minute or hour, controls time. Yes, I do see the second hand as a literal needle that powers a clock, but I view it as something much more significant than merely that. It acts as the ultimate countdown tool. Each moment marks the end and start of a new countdown to a new event, we use seconds as the mechanism to measure these moments.

Yet how can we not question the legitimacy of the second hand? Honestly, the instances it counts down to appear extraordinarily trivial when in comparison to the absolute end of our existence. Thump. Thump. Once again, I can feel my heart violently throbbing in my chest. It marks the countdown to the end. Our demise. Our heart, ladies and gentlemen, serves as the unequivocal second-hand.