What if one morning you woke up purely in response to your
circadian rhythm? Summoned to morning by the light streaming in through the curtains.
No squawking alarm clock. Must have forgotten to set it. You head downstairs to
prepare breakfast. No green glow on the stove to indicate how much time you
have until you need to bust out the door to work. Huh, maybe the power went
out? You shower, dress, and toss granola bars and bruise-less apples in brown
bags for your pre-teen kids. No watch to check at the flick of your wrist.
Where did you put it? Even your iPhone appears out of batteries and
unresponsive.
“Kids? You awake yet?” You call up the stairs.
As you tromp through the house, restless to know whether
you’re aimed to make it to work on schedule it suddenly feels as though an
umbrella has opened up inside your chest. Why is it so impossible to locate one
working clock?
In fact, there isn’t a single way to read time anywhere in
sight. The wall clocks stare at you sans their hands. Those kids playing tricks. The cable box, where the numbers usually
light up the color of a sunset, remains black and useless. No numbers at all.
It’s as if time no longer exists, as though the night
swallowed it whole.
The entire morning has become Alfred Hitchcock meets
Ecclesiastes (the whole chasing after the wind bit).
What is going on? Who stole time? Please don’t let this be a
sign of early onset Alzheimer’s.
No, that can’t be it.
You rush to your desk to check your calendar so scrawled over
with family events it looks like a train schedule, grocery list, and roadmap
smashed together. Funny, all the activities are listed, but the dates are gone.
Vanished—missing even the month.
Forget this. You throw up your hands, yell to rouse the kids
one more time, then log online. Surely your computer won’t fail you now.
Ah, the monitor blips and the computer hums to life. Alas,
some answers. Time sweet time.
Guess again. All appears as normal, but the absence of any
reference to the time.
Are you being punished? You squint and tap hard on the
keyboard, willing one, just one substantiation of time to materialize. Had you
fooled yourself into thinking you could capture time like some hovering
butterfly? Netting it. Controlling it. Planning so much, with such intention,
expectation, and precision that time would bend to you like a flower opening to
the sun’s rays?
Is this your fault? Did you erase time?
***
These thoughts were inspired the other day when I realized the
insane number of methods that exist for keeping track of time. I thought about
the verse instructing us to be stewards of our time. I thought about Kansas and
their song “Dust in the Wind”. I also thought about The Twilight Zone. My thoughts have a tendency to do that—to keep
moving from one to the next—connecting, always connecting.
Then I began to envision the above scenario playing out in
my mind. I asked myself how my world would change if time simply disappeared.
(Yes, these are the wacky things that keep me up at night.)
I landed on this:
It’s not seconds and minutes that define who we are, they’re
merely the shell, but the moments we create inside those seconds and minutes
that embody us most.
Here’s another quote that speaks well to this imaginary
scenario:
“Life is made up of moments,
small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement. It would be
wonderful if they came to us unsummoned, but particularly in lives as busy as
the ones most of us lead now, that won’t happen. We have to teach ourselves how
to make room for them, to love them, and to live, really live.” ~ Anna Quindlen, A Short Guide to a Happy Life
How would your world change if time simply disappeared? Initial
thoughts…*photo by stock.XCHNG
