Time is Like The Clock in My Heart

Well, here we are, September, 2009. It seems every year time is accelerating just a little faster than the previous year. Personally, I can’t believe how quickly ‘09 is slipping away. I remember in the nineties when I was still in business school, there seemed to be a strange phenomenon going on with me. It was the first semester of my first year. I was sitting in the library thumping my fingernails while studying for an exam. Thumping my nails is a nervous habit I’m not particularly fond of, which is why I keep them cropped low. As I was studying, I felt aggravated that my nails had once again reached that length. I was certain I had clipped them just a few days earlier, which brought up one of two questions. Either my nails were growing faster, which would explain the constant thumping, or it meant many more days had passed and I had simply lost track of time. Perhaps it only seemed my nails were growing faster.

From all accounts, the first year business students were to be barraged with work and exams during that first semester. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that I had simply lost track of the days. Strangely, it was the growth of my fingernails that prompted me to seriously contemplate the passage of time. Should time be perceived as fluid in a static way or as fluctuating and changing? This dialog existed in my head for all of about five minutes and then I was off to study for my next subject. Over a decade would pass before I revisited the concept of time and its passage.

Time, as we know it, is largely artificial. A few thousand years ago, the Mayans developed a calendar upon which our modern calendars are based, but even more significant was the invention of the clock! There is much debate among historians as to who invented the first timepiece. For me, the bigger question is whose decision was it to calibrate it? How did we come up with a 60-second minute, a 60-minute hour, and a 24-hour day? These were choices arbitrarily decided upon by a man, and are very much out of synch with time as it is seen in nature.

The concept of natural time is something I had never considered as recently as two years ago. I had always accepted time for what I had been told it was: 60-seconds; 60-minutes and 24 hours. In reality we know this isn’t an accurate timetable. All around us, there are clues about natural time and how it flows. Sunrise and sunset are simple examples, but even these are fluid and changing. In the summertime, days are longer. In winter, they are shorter. High and low tides, as well as full moons are also nature’s way of telling us what time it is, but for centuries we have chosen not to listen. Instead, we watch our clocks becoming slaves to them. For us, time has become this concept, which seems external to us. It is this thing we cannot grab a hold of, or that we race around to beat. Too many times I have heard “It’s time for me to have a baby,” or “It’s time for me to get married,” or “It’s time for me to buy property.” Time is this artificial clock we have imposed upon ourselves telling us how to live our lives. Shouldn’t getting married and having babies be based upon two loving and nurturing people finding each other and being ready to usher children into adulthood? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if this were the case? Or is it better to base such factors on being twenty-five or twenty-seven?

I remember how foreign and strange it seemed when I first read of indigenous cultures who didn’t keep track of time. I didn’t understand how these ancient tribes didn’t know how old they were. Now I do understand. These are the last of a few people who have managed to continue living in nature while existing in natural time. They didn’t know their ages just as trees don’t contemplate how old they are. Even within a woman’s body, there is a natural calendar, which can be interpreted by her menstrual cycle.

Although we may not realize it, many of today’s environmental issues are due in large party to our choice to remove ourselves from natural time. Instead of seeing ourselves as part of a system, we see nature as this thing happening around us, and that is independent of our actions. It is this ignorance that allows us to pollute the air and contaminate the water, and feel that there will be no ramifications for it.

Luckily for us, it is at the end of their calendar (in 2012) that those lofty Mayans predicted an end to our misunderstanding. According to their predictions, we will once again come to comprehend our roles in nature. And it appears we are right on time. If we look around us, there does appear to be an increase in awareness of how we fit in the system. In the near future, we will acknowledge that daylight savings time is not the needed adjustment to our timetable. We will come to recognize that the needed adjustments are within our hearts. When we fall in tune with everything around us, then and only then will time be on our side.