Of Sundials and Other Beastly Instruments of Time

On July 7, 1981 my firstborn son, Ben, was born.

I called my boss and told her I wouldn't be in for work that day, or any other day. She laughed and congratulated me. She knew it was coming, my 'retirement' at twenty-four.

I took my watch off and placed in it my jewelry box with a satisfied smile playing around my mouth.

I belonged to me again - and to this baby, and to my husband. The clock would have to proceed without me. "You're not the boss of me!" I thought. And so it's been ever since - for the most part.

I've learned a little bit since then. Having a paying job doesn't demand that one becomes a slave to time. Anyone in any circumstance can fall prey. And each person has the power to lift himself out of the quicksand of time pressure. It's a choice, an outlook, and an in-look.

In 200 B.C. the Roman playwright Plautus penned this lament:

"The Gods confound the man who first found out
How to distinguish the hours - confound him, too
Who in this place set up a sundial
To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
Into small pieces!

I can't (even sit down to eat) unless the sun gives leave.
The town's so full of these confounded dials..."

In 1304, Daffyd ap Gwvilyn, a Welsh bard, wrote: "Confusion to the black-faced clock by the side of the bank that awoke me! May its head, its tongue, its pair of ropes, and its wheels moulder; likewise its weights and dullard balls, its orifices, its hammer, its ducks quacking as if anticipating day and its ever restless works."

I'm not done. Please bear with me...

1884, Charles Dudley Warner, an American editor and essayist vented this: "The chopping up of time into rigid periods is an invasion of individual freedom and makes no allowances for differences in temperament and feeling."

1908, Octave Mirbeau, a French writer observed: "Our thoughts, feelings, and loves are a whirlwind. Everywhere life is rushing insanely like a cavalry charge...Everything around a man jumps, dances, gallops in a movement out of phase with his own."

And where are we now? How do we interpret this chopping up of time, this ruling of the clock, this movement out of sync with our living? Have we learned to be master of it?

On one hand you've got Thich Nhat Hanh, the well-known Buddhist leader imploring present day Americans to slow down, to "take the time to live more deeply."

On the other hand, from his book In Praise of Slowness, Carl Honore notes, "When people moan, 'Oh, I'm so busy, I'm run off my feet, my life is a blur, I haven't got time for anything,' what they often mean is, 'Look at me: I am hugely important, exciting and energetic.'"

From 200 B.C. until now what have we learned? We've become slaves to the created timepiece. We relish the squeezing and frantic filling of it. Our solution? In resignation we label this phenomenon The Tyranny of the Urgent, roll our eyes, and sigh knowingly.

Or unknowingly.

Which is it?

While our society is run by years, days, hours, and minutes, and while we have to work within the parameters of such a set-up in order to keep appointments and whatnot, we are not bound by time as much as we think we are. Though I don't wear a watch I am always on time for appointments, I'm dependable. I budget my time just like anyone else - just not down to the minute. But by chunks. By daylight and darkness. By morning, noon, evening, and night.

Like money, the clock is a wonderful servant, but a horrid master.

Let this true story be a lesson to us all in why slowing down and living deeply are not only more satisfying, but healthier than bowing to the tyranny of the urgent. From In Praise of Slowness:

In Japan "...the locals have a word - karoshi - that means 'death by overwork.' One of the most famous victims of karoshi was Kamei Shuji, a high-flying broker who routinely put in ninety-hour weeks during the Japanese stock market boom of the late 1980's. His company trumpeted his superhuman stamina in newsletters and training booklets, turning him into the gold standard to which all employees should aspire. In a rare break from Japanese protocol, Shuji was asked to coach senior colleagues in the art of salesmanship, which piled extra stress onto his pinstriped shoulders. When Japan's stock bubble burst in 1989, Shuji worked even longer hours to pick up the slack. In 1990, he died suddenly of a heart attack. He was twenty-six."

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. ~~ The Who