Time out

  Our lives are ruled by clocks. I wake to an alarm clock, wander into the kitchen with my cell phone clutched in my sluggish hand, and pour tea in a room surrounded with digital time keepers. On the microwave, oven and coffeemaker are more time keepers. My laptop has the time and date on the right upper corner. My car has not one, but two clocks. One digital and the other a round clock below the radio. I usually forget about that one. A clock greets me at the office. And then…
  My electronic medical charting displaying my schedule has several different time notations. I can see when a patient checked in, when my visit started and when they were discharged from the office. My office phone also reminds me of the date and time.


  I no longer wear a watch. For me, it’s beyond redundant.

  Tempus vitam Regit.  Time Rules Life.

  We all regulate our lives with these timekeeping instruments. But is that a good thing?
And if not…can we make it stop?

  You can read an interesting article on the ludicrous idea of stopping time here.

  I didn’t actually mean to bring time to a halt. What I meant was...how can we stop our relentless obsession with time. Those measured periods during which something is supposed to happen. A fixed moment. A division of chronology.

  What would it feel like to ignore the movement of the clock hands?

  To wake when your body has reached its fill of slumber, to eat when you’re hungry, to pause what you’re doing when the sky is shot with the taffy colored light of a glorious sunset. To chat with a co-worker when they’re feeling down…for as long as it took. ​

  It’s possible, you know. All you’d have to do is move to a small Norwegian town where they’re working to eliminate time. Really. You can read about it here.

  In a land where the sun doesn’t set in the summer and doesn’t rise in the winter, they’ve determined that clocks and watches just don’t have the same meaning that we give them here.

They’ve already started disposing of time…symbolically anyway.

  Like the Pont Des Arts bridge in Paris where ‘love locks’ used to be placed, the Norwegians attach their discarded watches to a bridge leading to the mainland. They’ve become more flexible with their work hours, school days, and get-togethers.

  It’s fascinating to think of being freed from the confines of a time marker. To become a master, instead of slave, to a digital device.

  According to Albert Einstein: “Time is an Illusion”.

It sure doesn’t feel that way to me Albert E., but maybe someday, I’ll make some time to try a different way of living. ​