An examination of time

What is time? Is it a series of fleeting moments or a river of honey gradually dripping past? We are taught to be concerned with it at a young age, and from then until we fall to it, it controls us. I first formulated my idea of what time actually was a few years ago. I received a book for my birthday from my cousin Phillip, a truly amazing human being. It was entitled ‘The Power of Now’, and written by a German spiritual teacher by the name of Eckhart Tolle. His ideas led me to an intellectual awakening. I realised that time is not a long strip of existence with a beginning and an end, but a speck in a vast expanse of nothing. After all, the only point in time that exists at all is now. Yesterday morning was just another set of ‘nows’, and I’ll be leaving the school today not in the future, but in a now yet to come. I think that only a minority of the world have grasped this idea.
We spend the first five years or so of our lives with no concept of time (this was over ten years ago for me, so bear with me if the finer points of childhood development are lost). The day seems like an endless playtime. A child wakes up, has something to break their fast, and then enjoys themself until the dreaded bedtime. They say ignorance is bliss, and that is certainly true in this case. Unfortunately, time passes (or does it?) and the child reaches adolescence. They enter the turbulent winds of high school and suddenly their days have been scheduled. He or she must awaken early enough to arrive at school on time, and they have allocated time for lessons, eating and socialising. Then they go home and if they are old and responsible enough they will have a study timetable! The young adult then leaves school prepared for a life of time management. Punctuality and time-management skills are now essential in finding work. The child is now an adult, who must deal with meetings, deadlines and possible shiftwork. At school we are introduced to the concept of time, manipulated into submitting ourselves to its rigorous control.

Is there a point at which this psychological servitude affects out mental wellbeing? In my opinion, yes, there is. With all this focus on time I think people have begun to waste mental and emotional energy on the past and the future. For example, I must perform a spoken assessment in English today. I wasted valuable sleeping time last night (a precious commodity in grade twelve) worrying about how I will perform. My mind was totally ignoring the present moment, instead focussing on a situation that doesn’t even exist. People believe that they can, on some level or another, predict what the future holds, but that is logically impossible. Just because something happened in a previous ‘now’ does not mean it will happen again. I remembered Tolle’s words and brought my attention back to the present moment. I thought to myself, “I’m not doing the speech now, so why worry about it now?”I rested that night with a liberated mind. This leads me to the idea that if people spent less time and effort regretting what happened in the past and worrying about the future, we would suffer a lot less unnecessary emotional anguish.

This concept of time is not yet entrenched in my subconscious thought processes. I still sometimes feel nervous about the future and regret my actions of last week. I have learnt, however, that people can transcend a life of conformance to schedule. I have a challenge for you now, dear reader. Try to spend a day without planning it beforehand. Take your literal or metaphorical watch off and simply do what you please for twenty-four hours. You should find it a pleasant experience and if you don’t, I hope, at least, that you remember where you put your watch.