Yes, of course, time matters. Being on time for things, knowing things will happen at a given time, coordinating with folks … it matters in countless ways. I’m thinking of occasions when time seems to make a bigger than usual difference for me.
More below.
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I go to sleep easily, quickly. Yes, that can change if something has me agitated or disturbed. But generally I am much at peace with my conscience, so that doesn’t negatively impact my sleep. There is one occasion, however, when sleep does NOT come easily for me. That is when I find myself awake in close proximity to the time when I need to get up. If I have to go to sleep quickly, in a rush, as it were … ah! Then sleep eludes me! Defies me! Laughs in my face!
So, my way of coping with that challenge is to never LOOK at the time when I want to go back to sleep. If I don’t KNOW that I have to go to sleep quickly, I go back to sleep easily and blissfully even if my waking time is just a few minutes away! I never know! All I have to do is not look at a clock or watch or cell phone or iPad, and I’m good! Happy! Unaffected by temporal anomalies! Or the fickle perception of those!
Another time when time seems different is when working. I like it when the day passes briskly, smoothly. I never watch the clock. I am generally aware of the time. I know mid-morning. I’ll look a bit if it’s close to lunchtime or a meeting time (of course) or time to go home. But I find that nothing slows time down like constantly checking the time.
(That reminded me of a character in Joseph Heller’s book, Catch-22. As I recall it, the character picked tasks explicitly to slow time down! I guess, in a war zone, one might feel that if one could slow time ENOUGH, one could live forever! But I have never wanted to do it.)
I worked with a fellow once. I don’t remember anything about him, except that he refused to wear a watch, and he asked the time, constantly. After a few hours of that, I declined to give him the time EVER AGAIN. His manic fixation on the time slowed my day to an astonishing degree. Always checking the time, noting with frustration that the ‘big hand’ had only advanced two minutes since the last time I checked it, two HOURS before! He never got the time from me again, because I didn’t consent to the whole slow time thing. Not for anybody.
Those of you who have known me for a while know I had a very bad accident in 2012. I spent about a month in the hospital, and the speed at which time passed was a source of frustration and distress. I couldn’t see my progress. I couldn’t see change, and I for damned sure couldn’t see much difference between hours or days. It took me close to 18 months of life to get through that one calendar month, and the memory (that aspect of it, anyway) still carries rather grim overtones.
I was thinking about it because someone very dear to me (with much more serious circumstances than mine were in that time of injury) is stuck in the hospital these days. Suffering quite tangibly by the slowness of time, the slowness of apparent progress.
And the first thing he sees upon awakening, the first thing he sees any time he looks up, is a big clock on the wall, with its second hand advancing second by second, at ten second intervals or more in the world-at-large. Slow slow slow.
I wouldn’t put it there if I was the one ‘designing’ and equipping the room. I’d be fine with having a clock in the room but the patient would have to deliberately and intentionally seek out the time to find it. I find its current placement to be somewhat cruel (not intentionally so, I am sure!). But I wouldn’t put it there.
My loved one is given a mouthful of cooling, hydrating crushed ice once per hour. Watching the clock waiting for that hour to pass is excruciating, because, I know that, for him, that hour is taking 7 or 8 hours to let the little hand advance one full increment.
And the pain and the difficulty of the circumstance needs no allies.
Then again, sometimes, time crawls!
Thanks for reading! On to tonight’s comments! Formatted by brillig! (Time with brillig is always wonderful! Highly recommended!)
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