After A Time...Is Another Time

Among the many aphorisms, I used to hear as a child, growing up in the countryside of Guyana, in South America, was this one, said by the older people in a very knowing way: "After a time...is another time!". In my inexperience about life, I used to
wonder what that could possibly mean. Now...many moons later...I have an idea of what was meant. I think, for one thing,
it was a recognition that we human beings , live our lives in chapters, in our "book of life". These chapters, whatever good or
bad they may contain, given time, come to an end, and we find ourselves living in another chapter of our life...or even
afterlife. I think it was sometimes said in a cautionary way, referring to negative behaviour, being engaged in by someone...
in a current chapter of life...a reminder that he or she might live to regret it...in another chapter...a bit like "what goes around, comes around", used so often in North America, and probably elsewhere. Somewhere in these words, was also a sense of how unexpectedly different our lives can become in a new chapter of it, for better or for worse, and that, that behooves us, not to get carried away, in the chapter we're in, knowing things can change in either direction, in another. Sometimes...when the "good" or "bad" old days, come into my mind, making me nostalgic or regretful, I return to my roots, shrug, and say to myself, just like the old ones once did, "Well...what can you do?...after a time...is another time!". Quester.