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You Are Here: Home - Newsletters - "Get Organized" - Article
"All the tragedies that we can imagine can be reduced to just one: the passage of time."
- Simon Weil How long have humans lived by the clock, using a highly QUANTIFIED system to chunk up our days? Actually, it's a fairly recent development. A few hundred years ago with the Industrial Revolution, our modern sense of time began when factory shift changes were marked by a whistle calling workers to their jobs. That's when NATURAL time fell by the wayside. Today, as members of a complex society with rules and regulations, we've agreed upon a measure of time that is specific and global. We sometimes forget that time hasn't always been so minutely defined.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME
When we lived as hunter-gatherers in caves and then with early agriculture, time was BASIC: day, night, moon cycles, seasons. Once religion was part of things, time got more complicated. Now we had a calendar with weeks and months. Time was measured seriously because with the advent of religion and settled communities, specific holidays and other gatherings needed to be recorded. Continue the progression: today, time is GLOBALLY agreed upon. You can even get an atomic clock that sets itself via satellite, telling the 'exact' time.
TIME IS EVERYWHERE
I don't wear a watch, and I have only a few clocks in my house: the requisite alarm, and clocks for the main rooms. But the time is also before me on my cell phone, and when I am driving, it is on the dashboard. At any given moment in the day, whether overcast or sunny, I could tell you within half an hour what the time is. Even if it's been quite a while since I last saw a clock.
WHEN CLOCK WATCHING GETS UNHEALTHY
I am so steeped in the HABIT of measured time, that it is automatic for me to chunk it up -- whether I want to or not. I can be messing around in the garden on a long-term project with no place else I have to be that day. Yet internally, I've kept TRACK somehow, and I know that I have been in the garden for about two hours. I'm not entirely sure this is a good thing, as it keeps me thinking about the future and the past, rather than the present moment I'm in at that time.
WHAT IS TIME, ANYHOW?
Paraphrasing St. Augustine, "I know the meaning of time...until I have to explain it." Scientific time and philosophic time exist, but aren't practical. What means something to us is PERCEIVED time. You've heard the cliche, "Time flies when you are having fun." It's a cliche because it is true: the human experience of time is indeed ELASTIC and fluid.
A PARTING THOUGHT
Time passes DIFFERENTLY depending on what you're doing. Take notice of this, and capitalize on it. There is objective time and perceived time. Your experience of life is based entirely in perceived time, so make it the highest quality you can. The fact is that only in the moment NOW is it possible to feel joyful and fulfilled. "Your personal time exists only for you and for as long as you live. No one will ever be more responsible than you are for the quality of your time." - Servan-Schreiber.
Sarah Woolsey's articles on topics related to clocks are published in "The Clock News" -- the leading resource on-line for information about clocks. Visit her website at www.rcclock.com. Want to receive these kind of articles via e-mail each month? Sign up for a free subscription. Click here to return to "Get Organized" -- October 2005... Add this page to your Bookmarks!
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