By Ellen Blaufarb

SALMAN RUSHDIE’S NEW BOOK, “Luka and the Fire of Life,” is an allegorical journey embarked on by a son to save a father. Luka must pass through the challenges of the Torrent of Words that thunders down from the Sea of Stories into the Lake of Wisdom, whose waters are illumined by the Dawn of Days, and out of which flows the River of Time.

The Lake of Wisdom, as is well known, stands in the shadow of the Mountain of Knowledge, at whose summit burns the Fire of Life. It is within the pages of this creation of a magical world that Rushdie’s philosophy of time emerges.

The practical realities set forth by Rushdie had me realizing how many disciplines ponder the realities of time.

Philosophers wonder whether time and space exist independently of the mind or independently of one another, what accounts for time’s unidirectional flow, and whether times other than the present moment exist — and they question the nature of identity (particularly the nature of identity over time).

The physicist and quantum physicist look at paradoxes, at time travel and alternate universes as possibilities in understanding the nature of time.

The linguist, such as George Lakoff, looks at the metaphor “time is money” and helps us realize that we are using our everyday experiences with money as we do time, as a limited resource and a valuable commodity. This metaphor is specific to our culture — thus our languaging is as follows:

“You’re wasting my time.”

“This gadget will save you hours.”

“I don’t have the time to give you.”

“How do you spend your time these days?”

“That flat tire cost me an hour.”

“I’ve invested a lot of time in her.”

“I don’t have enough time to spare for that.”

“You’re running out of time.”

“You need to budget your time.”

“Put aside some time for ping-pong.”

“Is that worth your while?”

“Do you have much time left?”

“He’s living on borrowed time.”

“You don’t use your time profitably.”

“I lost a lot of time when I got sick.”

The great thinkers have written proverbs about time:

Shakespeare: “Come what may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”

Benjamin Franklin: “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.”

Napoleon I: “Every hour of lost time is a chance of future misfortune.”

J. Mason: “As every thread of gold is valuable, so is every moment of time.”

St. Maher/Chaucer: “Time and tide wait for no man.”

While others are pondering the nature of the time-space continuum, analyzing the metaphors that tell how we think about time and wondering whether time exists beyond human conceptualization, Rushdie tells us how we experience time.

He says, “The time of our feelings is not the same as the time of the clocks. We know that when we are excited by what we are doing, time speeds up, and when we are bored, it slows down. We know that at moments of great excitement or anticipation, at wonderful moments, time can stand still….We know that when we fall in love, time ceases to exist, and we also know that time can repeat itself, so that you can be stuck in one day for the whole of your life.”

As we age, we begin to notice that time speeds up. Remembering the leisurely, long summers of our youth, we become nostalgic. We don’t have much time for reverie, however, because we don’t want to waste the precious moments in the last stage of life.

Seeing time as a commodity not to be wasted — a limited resource — we are a culture that is hell-bent on filling up our every moment in valuable pursuits.

How refreshing it is when the creative mind of Salman Rushdie suggests we have a “More Sensible Relationship with Time, Allowing for Dream-time, Lateness, Vagueness, Delays, Reluctances, and the Widespread Dislike of Growing Old.”

Ellen Blaufarb is a marriage family therapist and counselor at Liberty High School.