Friday, June 22, 2007

Time Is All We Have


Of late, I’ve sort of gotten hooked on a word game called Decoda-quote that appears daily in our local newspaper (and probably in yours as well).

The object of the word puzzle is to solve a pithy quotation by often famous sources. However, what appears is a jumble of alphabetic letters in groups. Each group is a word and each letter consistently represents another.

So if this is what appears: “GK MCF JLZBF; GK MCF MZBF,” the solution would be: “DO THE CRIME; DO THE TIME.” Obviously, some are much harder to solve than others.

Today’s Decodaquote was not only pithy, but also oozed with poignancy. The solution was, “Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time you’ve got.”

The author was the late urbane columnist, Art Buchwald, who himself has now run out of time as we know it. But he was so right.

“For everything there is a season,” declares the ancient book of Ecclesiastes (and popularized four decades ago in a song recorded by The Byrds).

We need to use wisely the time with which we are given.

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