A poor life this if, full of care,we have no time to stand and stare.—W. H. Davies
Time is a measure we use to punish ourselves with the reminder that we can never have enough of it
I have a new wrist watch. I’ve not worn one in well over ten years. In fact, I can’t honestly say I remember the last time I wore a wrist watch; the batteries tend to not last too long and I rarely have time to stop by a jeweler to have the battery replaced. Watch bands also seem to be problematic for me. But, this watch was only a dollar, a promotional item actually, so how could I refuse something that cost less than a cup of bad coffee?
Most watches today are smooth, digitally driven timepieces, but this one is old-fashioned gears and springs with a contemporary face. I don’t expect it to last too long. Mostly, I forget it’s on my wrist until the face gets caught on my shirt sleeve. The watch is about as simple a timepiece as one might find.
But early this morning, in the darkness before my alarm went off reminding me there was a fashion show which would ultimately end up being disappointing, I noticed something about my watch which may ultimately be disturbing: it ticks loudly. Tick. Tick. Tick. No tock, mind you, because the tock response to the tick only occurs in devices driven by a pendulum; it is the return of the pendulum that creates the sound. Spring-wound watches just tick, tick, tick, and in the middle of the night this watch was annoyingly loud.
My mind immediately thinks of that chorus from the Steve Miller Band’s Fly Like An Eagle:
Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ Into the future Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ Into the future
Over and over and over that phrase repeats with all the annoyance of the ticking on my watch. Time. Ticking. Slipping. What am I doing in bed? Why do we have to sleep? I should be up, awake, living.
We were in the car yesterday with the TED Radio Hour playing on NPR, half-listening, half-daydreaming as Keith Chen talked about how our language affects our ability to save money. Specifically, people whose language does not contain the future tense tend to save better than those who do use the future tense. That part is interesting enough, but toward the end of the talk Chen says that not only does the absence of future tense correlate to higher savings, but better health, better eating habits, less likely to smoke, and more likely to practice safe sex. All of this hinging on how our language leads us to understand the future, and in a broader sense, time itself. Extrapolating those findings out to the extreme, we might conclude that how we understand time, the perspective our language gives us on time, may lead us to behaviors that affect just how much time we have. Future tense kills.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Loudly. Far too loudly.
In the quiet of the night, every sound is exaggerated, of course, and so is our reasoning. Acting on thoughts one has at 1:00 in the morning is rarely a good move. A cup of coffee, perhaps some bacon and eggs, a moment to give those thoughts a second examination, might prevent one from doing something they would later regret. The ticking of my watch doesn’t change volume levels between 1:00 AM and 7:00 AM, but my perception of that ticking, and my perspective of time, does change. I’m less disturbed by either once I’m up and active and waiting for the next fashion show. I worry less about running out of time in my life, and more about being on time for the next runway.
Still, I wish I had more time; more time when my brain is active and not feeling sluggish from the morning’s work. Getting up so early often means that by the time my schedule opens up around 1:00 PM, either my brain or my body is exhausted. I want to keep going, to edit more, to write a couple more articles, or perhaps read a bit, but rarely is there enough energy for that to happen and I end up feeling that I’ve wasted time napping. Just imagine what I could have gotten done had I stayed awake!
With each birthday, time ticks a bit louder, reminding me that I have less of it now than I did 12 months ago, and raising the question of how I will use the time I have left. We’ve all heard the platitude about living each day as if it were your last. That doesn’t work, though. What we do today affects tomorrow, and for the greater majority of us there will be a tomorrow. We can’t live as if there are no consequences for our actions. The fact that we might die tomorrow does not excuse our lack of responsibility today.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Time for me to wrap this up. Another fashion show starts soon. If you’ve not been reading the reviews on Pattern, I’m disappointed in you. Those take a lot of my time, and I only have so much of that to give.
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A poor life this if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.—W. H. Davies
Time is a measure we use to punish ourselves with the reminder that we can never have enough of it
I have a new wrist watch. I’ve not worn one in well over ten years. In fact, I can’t honestly say I remember the last time I wore a wrist watch; the batteries tend to not last too long and I rarely have time to stop by a jeweler to have the battery replaced. Watch bands also seem to be problematic for me. But, this watch was only a dollar, a promotional item actually, so how could I refuse something that cost less than a cup of bad coffee?
Most watches today are smooth, digitally driven timepieces, but this one is old-fashioned gears and springs with a contemporary face. I don’t expect it to last too long. Mostly, I forget it’s on my wrist until the face gets caught on my shirt sleeve. The watch is about as simple a timepiece as one might find.
But early this morning, in the darkness before my alarm went off reminding me there was a fashion show which would ultimately end up being disappointing, I noticed something about my watch which may ultimately be disturbing: it ticks loudly. Tick. Tick. Tick. No tock, mind you, because the tock response to the tick only occurs in devices driven by a pendulum; it is the return of the pendulum that creates the sound. Spring-wound watches just tick, tick, tick, and in the middle of the night this watch was annoyingly loud.
My mind immediately thinks of that chorus from the Steve Miller Band’s Fly Like An Eagle:
Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’
Into the future
Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’
Into the future
Over and over and over that phrase repeats with all the annoyance of the ticking on my watch. Time. Ticking. Slipping. What am I doing in bed? Why do we have to sleep? I should be up, awake, living.
We were in the car yesterday with the TED Radio Hour playing on NPR, half-listening, half-daydreaming as Keith Chen talked about how our language affects our ability to save money. Specifically, people whose language does not contain the future tense tend to save better than those who do use the future tense. That part is interesting enough, but toward the end of the talk Chen says that not only does the absence of future tense correlate to higher savings, but better health, better eating habits, less likely to smoke, and more likely to practice safe sex. All of this hinging on how our language leads us to understand the future, and in a broader sense, time itself. Extrapolating those findings out to the extreme, we might conclude that how we understand time, the perspective our language gives us on time, may lead us to behaviors that affect just how much time we have. Future tense kills.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Loudly. Far too loudly.
In the quiet of the night, every sound is exaggerated, of course, and so is our reasoning. Acting on thoughts one has at 1:00 in the morning is rarely a good move. A cup of coffee, perhaps some bacon and eggs, a moment to give those thoughts a second examination, might prevent one from doing something they would later regret. The ticking of my watch doesn’t change volume levels between 1:00 AM and 7:00 AM, but my perception of that ticking, and my perspective of time, does change. I’m less disturbed by either once I’m up and active and waiting for the next fashion show. I worry less about running out of time in my life, and more about being on time for the next runway.
Still, I wish I had more time; more time when my brain is active and not feeling sluggish from the morning’s work. Getting up so early often means that by the time my schedule opens up around 1:00 PM, either my brain or my body is exhausted. I want to keep going, to edit more, to write a couple more articles, or perhaps read a bit, but rarely is there enough energy for that to happen and I end up feeling that I’ve wasted time napping. Just imagine what I could have gotten done had I stayed awake!
With each birthday, time ticks a bit louder, reminding me that I have less of it now than I did 12 months ago, and raising the question of how I will use the time I have left. We’ve all heard the platitude about living each day as if it were your last. That doesn’t work, though. What we do today affects tomorrow, and for the greater majority of us there will be a tomorrow. We can’t live as if there are no consequences for our actions. The fact that we might die tomorrow does not excuse our lack of responsibility today.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Time for me to wrap this up. Another fashion show starts soon. If you’ve not been reading the reviews on Pattern, I’m disappointed in you. Those take a lot of my time, and I only have so much of that to give.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Louder and louder.
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