Through the ages mankind has always had an issue with time. I know I have and I’m part of mankind so there is at least some truth in the above statement. Much of our lives are built around time too, time clocks, alarms clocks, pocket watches, Times Square, lunch time, break time, quitting time. Aarrrgggh time, time, time controls us and we don’t ever have enough of it for the things we want.
It pervades our language – the clock is ticking, time waits for no man, the time has come, all in due time,
in the nick of time, marking time, time is running out, just in time and many more examples exist. Face it kids, we’re stuck in time – oops there’s another one.
It makes me wonder if this universe is rigged with this time thing, you know? I mean maybe the great god of creation or whatever Supreme Being you happen to believe in set it up so we could just get things done. An arbitrary measure or adversary against which we could race, bet, think, do? It’s possible. Because really what is the point of time? What does it really mean in the longrun? That you can only have so many days to do something, to get something to create something. That once that arbitrary measure runs out so does your opportunities? It’s true that bodies age and with that so does our sense of time, possibly our inspiration to do things, achieve things or maybe we just get tired? On the other hand there are those out there who seem to defy time, look and act years younger than they are.
So maybe time has some aspect of agreement involved in it? You know like, you agree that time passes and things age as time passes and things change as time passes and stuff like that. But do they really? Is that really true or just a little game we’ve made up as part of the bigger game of life? I can think of dozens of examples of when I bent time so to speak.
Like I was running late and I had to, had to, had to be at a place at a certain time. Magically all the lights were green, the traffic disappeared, a parking spot appears right in front of the building. Or mom is coming over in fifteen minutes and somehow I’ve managed to clean the house before she gets there, or the man of your dreams finally calls and you’re showered, shaved and wriggled into that sexy little black dress in ten minutes flat. The fireman that manages to get the baby out of a burning building despite the impossiblity of it? And a million other examples that I’m sure you could think of in your own life.
More and more I’ve started to think that time is the enemy but not in the classical sense – not that it is going to beat me but my belief in its importance is going to beat me or us. It’s more a matter of the thinking, that it’s too late for a goal to be realized, for love, for happiness, for change, for a clean start, for anything really. I don’t believe that anymore and I’m glad. I think that time is starting to become my pet instead of the other way around. I will treat it nicely if it behaves and if it doesn’t then no desert for it.
How about you?
Anita Rodgers Mystery Writer 
I think it’s something we need to choose how to use instead of letting it run away on us by choosing to get caught up in things that keep us so busy that we don’t notice it’s passing.
If that makes any sense at all!
Hey Bettina,
It makes as much sense as anything else does. 😉
Annie
LikeLike
Great post.
It’s interesting how much the loss of time intrigues us. If only we could capture more – think about all the stories with time machines in them!
I think time is something that makes man who he is. With only so much time, we are forced to make choices. Do we choose right or wrong? Do we choose work or family? It forces us to align priorities for ourselves. And this is what we will be judged by when our time is up.
Hey MJ,
Great viewpoint – I wonder though…does it force us to align our priorities and aberrate us into believing we simply can’t do certain things, because there isn’t enough time? For example, if instead of time clocks and hourly wages, what if people were hired to accomplish certain things and were paid that way? You know produce 100 widgets a day and get x number of dollars for it, instead of work eight hours a day and get the same x number of dollars for it. I think that would change the whole paradigm of business and commerce right there and people would have a whole lot more leisure time because the incentive would get them producing faster and probably better. What do you think?
Annie
LikeLike
Hi WC,
I’m a long-time admirer of your writing — first comment, though.
I think time has a lot to do with forgetting, and that time only starts to matter when the decision to forget is made. Change that decision — work to remember everything, and timelessness will come to rule every day, forever.
Will
Hey Will, welcome to my little dive. So you’ve been lurking a long time, eh and finally decided to put your toe into the pool? Far out.
I like your idea about forgetting – I think you may be onto something. 😉
WC
LikeLike
Hi Annie,
So it’s OK if I don’t pay my taxes until whenever? Will you visit me in prison? 🙂
the Grit
Hey Grit,
Works for me. And sure I’ll visit you in prison, heck I’ll even bring you a cake with a file baked into it. 😉
Annie
LikeLike
Hi Annieo,
I have so much time that sometimes needs filling and sometimes it doesn’t.
I’m very good with the basics of time but at a bit of a deeper level ( I think ) time is just a state of mind.
Time waits for no-one, I like to dance time. You got to flow with time.
Time is never late.
Love
Di
Hey Di-Di – I think you’re right, it may just be a state of mind. 🙂
Annie
LikeLike
No for me I don’t think that time matters. It only matters when I’m feeling urgent.
Time could be looked at as a rule.
Urgh !!
Time to write
Time to speak
Time to eat
Time to sleep.
One thing that comes into my mind a lot is the timing of things. I’m not very good in some respects where time is concerned in the timing. OMG ! So many tangents my head can go on here about time.
Time for bed
Timeless
Di
Hey Di,
I like your tangents, they’re always interesting and often inspiriing. 😉
love
Annie
LikeLike
Time is my superpower. I have the uncanny ability to know the time within seven minutes without ever looking at a watch. As far as superpowers go it is damn near worthless, although it does freak out my wife.
Hey it could always come in handy when the end of the world approaches – you’ll be seven minutes ahead of the crowd. 😉
Annie
LikeLike
Hello WriterChick,
“Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so…” Ford Prefect, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
It is an interestingly Western concept that of time. Introduced on a major scale during the Industrial Revolution to make sure the factory fodder forgot their bucolic roots (where work was measured in “things achieved” rather than time taken; much like your premise for a different paradigm of business) and all started and finished together.
Here, in Australia, the Aboriginal people have never measured time – the place where their “ancestors” dwell, “The Dreaming”, for example, is not in the past, but existent all around them. “Ancestor Spirits” transformed into the rocks and the rivers and the landscape… but they are still here. To them, time is not a linear, Newtonian passage in one direction; rather, it flows back and forth and around. Even the concepts I have had to put in inverted commas – the English language treatment of these concepts is insufficient to explain them adequately.
Similarly, Pacific Islanders (from such places as Talofa Lava, Fakaalofa Atu and other equally exotic-sounding places) see “time” not in terms of, “I want this done at this time…”, but more as, “I want this done…today would be good, but if the goat gets out or you need to help your father build a new fence, then soon would be good too…”
I would like to think that if we could assimilate a concept similar to this – and change our lives accordingly – the freedom of not being “ruled” by time would be a marvellous stress release and a ridding of burden.
Until then, my alarm still goes off at precisely 6.45am every morning… 😎
Cheers,
CJ
Hey Colin,
Thanks for taking the time to express your extensive viewpoint about time. I never knew anything really about the Aboriginal people and I like what you’ve said about them. It seems a much freer and simpler approach to life indeed. And it does give one pause to consider who is more civilized, the civilized world or those who live outside and make their own rules for living – You have to wonder, don’t you?
And while I have more or less thrown out my alarm clock since I became self employed there are still pesky things like appointments and deadlines – taskmasters of time which I begrudgingly defer to as well.
Thanks for reading.
WC
LikeLike
Annie-it’s probably been ten or more years, but I went through this thing where I believed no one knew what time it REALLY was, I mean how could they know? By the time man decided to use calendars and clocks, how did they choose where to begin? Who got to decide and what about all the time that existed before that? I mean it still kind of baffles me actually; but ultimately one of those things I had to store in my ‘let it go Kim’ corners, you know?
I am glad to hear you are welcoming time these days. I think we are all guilty of thinking it is too late for this or that and it’s nice to know some of us are trying to get away from that mentality. It really is stinkin’ thinkin’. I know you had a great weekend. Great post, girlie. Hugs, Kim
Hey Kimmie!
I think we all go through a thing with time. I do believe it is one of those things that can really wrap you around a telephone if you let it. I don’t know if I am welcoming time so much as I’m not letting it stop me from things – and yes, it will be a very nice weekend.
Love
Annie
LikeLike
I never ever ever went without wearing a watch. It was the first thing I put on in the morning and the last thing I took off at night. This was a huge pet peeve of the Urbane Lion’s. He absolutely forbid me to wear a watch on the weekends. Seriously, it is the ONLY thing he as laid down a rule about. So, to humour him, I didn’t wear my watch on the weekends. Drove me insane for the first several weekends. Then one of the pins broke on my strap and I asked him to fix it. He hasn’t. On purpose, I’m sure, because that was over a month ago. And you know what? I don’t miss that stupid old watch one single bit.
Hey Panther,
I had a thing about watches too – in fact, I used to collect them. I’m not much for jewelry, usually just earrings and (once upon a time) watches. But somewhere in the last year I’ve just stopped wearing my watch(es) and ironically they all need batteries and just sit in my little jewelry box now. If I really need to know the time I can check my cell phone or a wall clock if there is one around – mostly though it’s better to measure your day by what you’ve done, seen, felt, heard – don’t you think?
Annie
LikeLike
Hi Annie,
I would just like to remind you that the end of the world will be 4 years, 1 month, and 29 days from now. I’ve put up a convenient count down clock on my blog. For those of you who want to into your Day Planner, or whatever the modern electronic equivalent is, that would be midnight on 12/21/12, at least according to the Mayans.
the Grit
Hey Grit,
Hmmm…well I guess I better get to those clearance sales then – hate to miss a shopping opportunity just because time is short. 😉
Annie
LikeLike
Well WC,
The whole piecework pay thing is an element of accounting for control. The only problem of people being paid per output is that you have to be able to control for quality or else they will just put out as much crap as possible to make the money.
The problem to me is the necessity to make that one extra buck. If we could be content with only what we needed and some of what we want instead of everything we want, we could have more time for things besides work. (Think ridiculous CEO pay.)
Ah, but we are all busy keeping up with the Jones’ aren’t we?
Hey MJ,
Well I don’t know…what’s the diff between that and people gold bricking to meet their hourly requirement? You always have to have qc anyway, right? I’ve worked for companies where I was paid based on performance and I always made much more money and had to devote much less time – since there was no need to find things to be busy with. Certainly regardless of how a business runs, there will always be gold brickers but I think by and large people are productive and inspired to be more productive and efficient if they are being paid based on performance.
WC
LikeLike
Time is on my side. (Yes, it is.)
This is the attitude I try to maintain, and sometimes I even get the feeling I might be right about it.
And the body learns to keep time; I’ve gotten to the point where I can wake up in the middle of the night, not look at the clock, guess the time and then look at the clock, and I’m within 15 minutes 90 percent of the, um, time.
As for the Joneses, I don’t keep up with them; I’d just as soon drag them down to my level.
LOL CG,
Definitely drag those Joneses down with you – not the other way around. 😉
WC
LikeLike
I don’t live by the clock anymore. Well, maybe just a little. I don’t wear a watch. I go to sleep and get up when I want. If I have to pick up my daughter at the boat I have her call me when she gets on the boat so that I don’t have to deal with the time. I cook supper when I start getting hungry. But even with all that, time goes by too fast. The only reason I know that is because I’m 59 freakin’ years old and I’m sure I should only be 29.
Hey Joanie!
I like that approach! Truth be told I”m pretty much there myself, we don’t need no stinkin’ clocks, eh? 😉
hugs & jugs,
Annie
LikeLike
A very insightful piece, Annie. I’ve oft wondered about time and the permanence of its effect on you and I. Einstein taught us that time is relative, so perhaps we’re not the slave to time that we suppose. So, when out time runs out, perhaps there’s something else waiting for us. After all, Shakespeare reminds us,
– JOS
Hey JOS!
I think ol’ Willie Shakespeare had something there – but then he always did. 😉
Annie
LikeLike
Lovely post and fabulous comments! I learned a lot here. I don’t wear a watch, the only time I get concerned about time is how much of it I’ve ‘used up’ blogging… ALWAYS worthwhile, of course, since I stop by here.
Hey C!
Absolutely, time spent blogging is time well spent. 😉
Annie
LikeLike
Just dropping by to say I’m a new visitor to your blog. 🙂
Time is relative.
I often find it perplexing losing hours and gaining hours back if I travel around the world. I’ve gained back time. (scratches head) How is that possible?
How about going back in time when you celebrate your birthday twice in a week when you hopped to another country? Or celebrating New Year’s twice because other places have their own calendar too and their own concept of time?
How about when a single moment last forever but a whole week goes by in a blur? Or how dreams seem to last for eons then you woke up to discover a minute has just gone by.
It’s truly one of the greatest gifts of life bestowed on us to have our own unique experience of time. 😉
Hey Kate, welcome to my little dive. 😉 Wow, I like the way you think. Time as this bizarre, g-tortional malleable thing. I like that though – gives us the power, eh? 🙂
WC
LikeLike