The concept of time fascinates me…a core part of humanity, history, how we live and organise society… yet when asked, time is a difficult thing to define.
We construct time as the progression of events from past, present into the future yet to come. While its nature is not tactile, it measures palpably in transit or passage.
My relationship with time crystallised at an early age…growing up telling time was a necessary skill. School and home life emphasised the importance to read time and we wrapped our lives around it…my clock of choice was analogue.
Digital watches were flashy, fancy machines but never for me.
I love the mental and cognitive jog experienced reading the patterns of hands on a dial.
As school kids we carried the old ten cent coin to school and drew countless dials on our workbooks. Our teacher would drill lessons on reading and illustrating time in so many scenarios that those who had an interest mastered the skill.
My father did this as well, often to let me know how long before he and my mother would come home. It was common for me to come to an empty house with older siblings away in boarding school and college and folks with busy lives. I spent a lot of time staring at the clock in the foyer and looking out at the gate for signs of anyone coming home. As soon as car headlights turned into our gate, I sighed loudly in relief. It was as though I held my breathe until someone came home. Who knows perhaps I feared one day none of them would return.
Anyway since then I have paid attention to watches and clocks all around me… the hour, minute and sometimes second hand constantly rotating fascinating me about the nature of time. Despite all the evolving ideas of using phones and digital gizmos to tell time, I stick to a trusty wristwatch to read the time.
In Kiswahili we tell the time according to hours after sunrise (six o’clock in the morning) and before sunset (six o’clock in the evening)…..again my perspective of time in this way makes me more aware of the present moment and the passing of time in the course of a day or night.
I see time as a gift… as an opportunity for spaciousness… I see time also as a choice. It offers an option to be trapped from or be open to fulfilling our destiny.
I hope to never squander it too much in this lifetime.
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