Absurdity & Time

By Mackenzie Kyryluk

The absurdity of life is at times lost on me. I wake up, day after day, to a new opportunity, yet the same. Each living soul around this world is given the same time each day. We are defined and constricted to the sense of time our ancestors have bequeathed us. On the other side of the flowing river of time, we are each given an equitable allocation of this undefinable resource. What is time? Imagine you're given the task of explaining this concept to someone with no prior knowledge. “One second is saying Mississippi out loud, a minute is 60 of those, and an hour another 60 of those, but in a day there are 24 hours, that makes a day, and in a year there are 365 of those, but every four years there are 366.”

Yes, it follows the angle at which the sun moves around the Earth and the time it takes for the Earth to make one full rotation around the Sun. Is it not also a wonder that within that time it takes for the earth to make its ‘full year’ journey, it also spins on its own axis and produces an experience we bipedal sapiens take as seasons. Two primary and two support, transitory seasons. From the cold, life-suppressing Winter, we move through wet Spring to the heat and bounty of Summer, then the seemingly slumbering state of Autumn. 

Absurdity is defined as ‘ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous’ or ‘having no rational or orderly relationship to human life: meaningless.’ The second definition is undoubtedly in place for the exact reason I am writing this, and even deeper, what is the meaning of meaning? Merriam defines meaning as ‘the thing one intends to convey especially by language’ or ‘significant quality.’ If absurdity is the existence of meaning related to human life, and meaning is something of ‘significant quality’ do we assume that how we have defined the ethereal, earthly existence we enjoy, through numbers, and sciences both physical and social, something we can say is for certain.

Is it not unreasonable, as a person who lives their intellectual life outside of these parameters set millennia ago, to find them not significant, or filled with meaning, but completely absurd? Time as we live it, is not a thing of significant substance but an act of coordination. It is the concept that grounds many minds in the minute map of universal marvel, an attempt at simplicity within a chaotic cove of contemplation. The very fact that we as a species attempt to break down this spiritual experience into our organizational drawer of understanding is questionably irritating. What is a minute? Could we not have lived in seasons as they did, unbound by the recent invention of mechanical clocks, once bound to a single room in the home, or the gasping sun now finding space in our pockets every waking moment of the day?

Humans hunger for order, a sense of significance and control, while the universe offers unthreatening motion, destruction, and creation. Timekeeping is one of the most elegant attempts to negotiate with an ever-moving mismatch. It is one of our most quietly tyrannical inventions. Meaning is not embedded in seconds or seasons. It does not live in calendars or clocks. It is a choice, an acceptance of consequences found between the details of attention and neglect, perception and deception. Between what you notice and ignore while the earth keeps moving, indifferent to either.

Mackenzie is a vagabond, wandering between life’s deepest indulgences and its most profound meanings. He is a man of dichotomies, drawn to both chaos and peace, compassion and insensitivity, ignorance and wisdom. A growing spirit, living the human experience, he still questions the life unfolding around him.

His adolescence was filled with curiosity and uncertainty, a time of searching for direction and meaning. Yet, through the people around him and the lessons they taught, he has shaped himself into the person he is today. He has and continues to know personal hardship, being lost, and being found.

Now, he moves between the structure of life and his longing to wander and learn. To experience new people, cultures, and places. He finds beauty in quiet moments, fleeting connections, and the rhythm of new places. He makes mistakes but sees them as lessons, not failures. 

He wrestles with being present, often mistaking purpose for perfection and second-guessing his own path. He prefers sunrises over sunsets, drawn to the promise of a new day. He dreams of a life rich with purpose and connection, knowing that meaning is found not in perfection but in presence.