Who was your most influential teacher? Why?

During my student’s years, I never had a meaningful teacher. Maybe the only one who caused some impact in my life was a philosophy teacher who kept asking me and my classmates: What is real?

That question haunts me up to this day. It’s a Plato vs Aristotle issue that remains unsolved. Does reality exist because of our perception of it, or does it exist by itself? But if there is not a single mind to observe reality, would it matter if it exists by itself?

Well, that’s a long discussion full of twists. But in my case the best teachers I had were life and time; one I experience within the limits of my being, the other one I feel in a subjective way. That makes both of them mysterious and fascinating.

Is the life I experience the same as everybody else does? Is time perceived by others the same way I do? Anyway, both life and time have taught me important lessons.

Life taught me that it only has a full pack to offer, which includes happiness and suffering. Happiness gives the illusion that everything will always be okay, and suffering offers the illusion that someday everything will be okay. However, everything is always changing; our lives can turn upside down overnight.

I think the secret of life is to manage it, aware that you’re not special and that you’re vulnerable as everybody else. And when good times come, we should enjoy it at its fullest, and when bad times come, we should embrace it, because from the two, it’s the only one that really teaches us something; pain and suffering are the only coins life accepts to give us wisdom.

My other teacher munches me every day. It’s time, and it constantly and slowly consumes the life that is in me. To me, time is even more mysterious than life. We split it into past, present, and future. But where are they? We can say the present is here, but as soon as we say it, that present becomes our past, and it does it ticking toward the future.

Time intrigues me so much that in my book Johnny Rikkens’ Fantastic Worlds, the apprentices have an entire class dedicated only to learn how to manipulate time, perform time traveling, etc.

On their first lesson about it, the apprentices were confronted with the riddle below. Read it and tell me what you think about it in the comments section.

“Please, don’t look for me;

I’m just a silent watcher.

No one can feel me till I passed.

But I have seen everything in history;

My eyes are never full of new things.

You were born because of my continuous walk,

In which I took and gave you everything you loved.

When you feel you’re on the top, I’ll be your ceiling.

In your lowest moments, I’ll be under your feet.

Yes, I always do my work, sometimes like a thief.

One day, I’ll take everything you can give me,

But I’ll always carry you on my back as long as I live;

Nobody can erase you from my book written with eternal ink.

I know you want to know me; you can’t wait!

But, hey, stop looking for me; that’s a bait.

When you see me coming, it’ll be too late.

But late just for you and your tired old eyes.

And being angry at me is useless; that’s not wise!

I’m just passing, dancing, trotting and doing my job,

And by doing it to you, I’ll never apologize.”