Time is always turning and yet it is still because its march is ordered and predictable. There is a relentless continuity to it. Each day, the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. The days come and go, the seasons come and go, the planets move around in their orbits ceaselessly and expanding the horizon everything in this universe operates according to a plan. This is a phenomenon that remains unchanged since the beginning of time. Moreover it applies to all the things in the universe that homo-sapiens didn’t create. There is a rhythm, a familiarity and timelessness that is so unmindful of itself, to this occurrence. The world as created by us, the highest evolutionary beings (until now) is in complete opposition to this phenomenon.
I am fascinated.
Fascinated by the world around me. Fascinated by the people who inhabit this world. By us. What makes us so mindful of time and its passage? What are the driving forces that impel and compel us to order our lives, and all we see around us into comfortable slots? To go back to the beginning, why did we feel the need to slot time and make a day be the equivalent of 24 hours and an hour the equivalent of 60 minutes and so on? Well time could have remained timeless, if you see what I mean. Would it really have mattered if time was… well just time. Of course, science will explain why time had to be slotted. So after science explained it…. we then had to make time count. Time had to be accounted for. A time for sleeping, a time for waking, a time for eating, a time for learning, a time for working and when all this was done….. how did it fundamentally change what was going to happen to us. If life was to give us the chance to spend another day as a guest on this earth we would, and if not we would be snuffed out that very minute.
We have been conditioned by millennia into making and leaving some mark while we are walking this earth. So does anyone know why we chase these mirages? Of course one of the primary reasons seems to be our overwhelming need to impress on eternity itself that we are the highest evolutionary beings. Hence we hurry and compress time and rush to establish our supremacy in all spheres fearing that if we didn’t rush to fill the spaces we will not prove ourselves. However at the end of it all, it begs the question…. To whom are we proving ourselves?
Now, if we didn’t have to honor this obligation it’s interesting to ponder on what might have been. If we never had to think about time and rushing against deadlines……. and its really difficult for me to imagine a scenario like that. If time had no limits…. What would this world be? After spending so many agonizing minutes trying to drum up an existence in the absence of the pressure of relentless time, I can come up with practically nothing. My indoctrinated conditioning is stunting my imagination.
Why don’t we all re-look at this and I invite all readers to come up with their versions of the world in this scenario. We’ll have a merry amalgamation and assimilation of whacky imaginations.
Shalini Puthiyedam is an engineer, NGO volunteer, teacher, French linguist, amateur singer, home maker and a world citizen who has aspirations for a just and equal world. You may wanna follow her @shalinipv
Pic source
Dear Shalini,
Glad that I am the first one to read/comment! I am with you on the idea. For me, there should be long nights and short days, but long holidays ! The salary day and week end should be very frequent, to make us moving on and on…
Good food for thought! Lets wait for more comments!
Best Regards,
Renjith Sarada
Well… let’s wait for more comments and thank you for being the first to do so. Hmmmm….salary days….that’s right…why not all the time
i think it all started, way back in time, when time remained timeless, and people wanted to keep track of it. But ‘m still curious what made them think of 60 seconds/60 minutes and 24 hours, and not 50 or 100 seconds/minutes and 20 or 25 hours? Well, ‘m not knowledgeable about the Indian (the India it was until the British came in) way of time analysis/slotting.
Of course, there’s a mathematical explanation to this, but what the heck, we just need the superficial logic that governs us with respect to TIME.
As usual, this is a brilliant article that keeps us thinking about time..
Hi Naren,
Thanks for the comments and i must admit that its fascinating to try and fathom what might have been if we didnt know time as we know it now
ITs becoz of this “TIME” that we appreciate weekends! Else there would be no difference between weekends and weekdays. Shalu, would love to have that extra 24 hours as a guest and which would not fit into any slot….