Cicadas, as Nymphs, live underground for as long as 3-17 years. This is an Incredibly long time to stay dormant in soil, waiting to be soaked up in sunshine, only if we see Cicadas’ life from our perspective with a sense of time that human cognition holds. Do Cicadas think, “oh man…. this is hella long…. when on earth can I get out of the darkness and become a Cicada?” ? Probably not. No evidence, but at least I don’t think so. Cicadas perhaps don’t even know the difference in length of time between the 7-year Nymph period and the 7-day Cicada period. I assume that their sense of time is different from ours, or they don’t have, so to speak, a sense of time at all. Therefore, I reckon, 7 or 17 or whatsoever years of their underground life is actually “the same” as 7 days of their sunny life. They are simply Nymphs when they are Nymphs. They are Cicadas when they are Cicadas. There isn’t such a thing as a short time or a long time. No comparison because there is no concept of time that we construct (I believe). Nymphs don’t bear a long and severe “sleeping” time for multiple years and long for being a full Cicada form. No waiting. No craving. The stages of Nymph, incomplete metamorphosis and Cicadas are all the same to them. When time comes, they change. They don’t get bothered. When they die after several days as Cicadas, they don’t regret, “Damn, this was too short despite my Nymph period!!”

This is actually amazing! No dissatisfaction of wanting to be something different. No frustration of being pended. No sorrow of being too short. A total paradigm shift of notion of time. I’ll live on the Cicadas’ time concept from now on. It will take a while to shift my cognitive process of time. But, eventually I will get there. Freeing myself from time.