It's About Time

by Jacqueline Cruver

We think of this time of year as an ending to the calendar year. Personally, I am not fond of endings of any kind. I have never liked the end of the day, the end of a hike, the end of a project or the end of a book. The changing seasons in the natural world are continuous and do not always reflect the turning calendar page. They do not really act in accordance with increments of time. The squirrels hiding their treasures do not know what month it is. It is simply time to prepare for the next season. Only humans divide and measure time into minutes and hours, days and weeks. Time is a manmade construct and we structure our lives by it.

“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back” -Harvey Mackey, an American author and columnist

It seems to change tempo in relation to our enjoyment of it. It speeds up when we are enjoying it and drags when we are not. I think our regard for time changes in the different stages of our lives. Isn’t it funny how you cannot see it but you can imagine changes? Some may see time as aging, but philosophers may argue that is not accurate. What we perceive as aging is merely the progressive and collective damage to our bodies and functions. Aging is visible maturation, as in mushrooms that grow in a few days or a fine grained wooden table darkened by hundreds of years of use. Knowing that we cannot avoid mortality is what shapes our very thinking. I think the increased awareness of spending time in nature as a prescription for stress relief, may reflect the fact that time can be forgotten when you step out into the quiet places. My steps become as fast or slow as I wish them to be. My breathing becomes slow, relaxed, in . . . and out . . . The sun is slowly moving, so my senses are aware of the passing of moments but I do not count them. Rose Kennedy was quoted to say, “Life isn’t a matter of milestones but of moments.” I try to appreciate my wealth every day.

Take The Time

We have created time, so we must navigate our path through it. It is a useful tool. If you are a musician, you need to keep time. If you are a cook, you need to watch the time. If you work from home you must become good at structuring your time. However, if you were a fan of Cheech and Chong in the sixties, you’ll remember the quote, “I’m not into time, man”. I think this too, is occasionally useful. It is difficult to learn to be in the moment. Being too concerned about time has caused me to hurry and miss many important things. I have passed countless interpretive historical highway markers on vacation road trips. I have missed opportunities to visit with important people in my life as I hurry to another destination, and I missed many precious conversations with my children, silenced as I hurried out the door to lesser priorities. I want-

-to share that thought when I see a parent reprimanding a little one to “HURRY UP!” with no apparent reason. Life should not be spent dominated by this constant pressure.

“The future is something which everyone reaches at the same rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” -C.S. Lewis, British author and theologian

Know The Time

Cell phones have accurately calibrated time sources and provide access to aps if you want to be even more precise. Whether the hours are counted with a 24 hour clock known as military time or a twelve hour clock that is most commonly used, there are 1,440 minutes in a 24 hour day to be asleep, and to be awake. The world regulates clocks and time by UTC, which means Coordinated Universal Time. I have recently laid awake several nights questioning this term and its function. The neighborhood in which I live is situated within the zone that receives a very clear amplification of very good, I must admit, music from a house that prefers 3 am for their listening pleasure. They have the previously mentioned time telling devices, so clearly this problem is not solved by coordinated, accurate timepieces, but knowing what time it is. If you watch the signals of the seasons, when the elderberries are good and plump for the birds, you know it is time to get the snow shovel out of the basement. It is time to prepare. Nature is my way to keep track of the changing seasons but I must depend on my watch to tell the time. I hate to buy batteries so I wear a wind-up watch. It is the size of a smartwatch but not. When I forget to wind it, I set it by checking my phone. But phone batteries will go dead with the extended power outages that we can expect in winter. Ahhh, the car jack charger! One can drive around and utilize the car charger unless the streets are impassable due to ice which is probably what has caused the power outage. Do not remain in a closed garage with the engine running to charge your phone. It will charge but you will die. A better action to take would be to follow that urge to run out into the street and scream, “Is anybody out there?” until you see real faces in real time, attached to real bodies. If it is very late at night and you have awakened the neighborhood, they will be aware of you and loudly tell you to be quiet. This will confirm there are other survivors and you will be ok. If the power does not come back on soon and you are in your down sleeping bag but still cold, look around the neighborhood for the telltale wood stove smoke of any of your neighbors. If you have a prior history of waking your neighbors after hours and have not made friends with any of them, you may have to consider putting in your own wood stove. I suggest you at least introduce yourself to ask them from whom they buy their wood. Archeologists have deduced that methods of timekeeping began with ancient Babylonians. It is believed that they counted by sixties in their system for mathematics and astronomy. This might be the reason for the amount of seconds to a minute and minutes to the hour. The ancient Egyptians are credited for first using the sundial before 1500B CE to mark units of time. It was calibrated to a water clock for night hours and for days that were cloudy. Each week has seven days, dating back to Babylonians observing seven celestial bodies. The Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are named after a collection of Norse and Roman gods, each controlling a day of the week. As the world continued to become more populated, adopting a unified calendar became useful. Early calendars reflected the changes of nature but were made to fit the constructs of society. Agriculture has very deep roots (pun intended) going as far back as the 27th century BCE according to Britannica.com. “The Summerian administration also needed a time unit comprising the whole agricultural cycle: for example, from delivery of new barley and the settling of pertinent accounts to the next crop. This financial year began about two months after barley cutting. For other purposes, a year began before or with the harvest.” The original Roman calendar began with March, leaving the two months of winter as dead time when the military and the government were not active. This explains why October, November and December do not reflect the proper sequence of their latin base of eight, nine, and ten today. January and February were not put into place until 452 BCE. The names of our months are based on a mix of numbers, emperors, Roman gods and goddesses. Most sources agree the calendar we follow today was started around 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. It therefore carries his name as the Gregorian calendar. It is both the civil and Christian ecclesiastical calendar. There are still many other calendars that remain in use worldwide for religious purposes. Different cultures have based their calendars on different cycles; the moon, the sun, the first fruits. A few countries still use theirs exclusively and some alongside the Gregorian version which has been slowly embraced over the years until most countries have adopted it. Ethiopia has remained using the Roman calendar of a 13 month year and it is in fact 2014 there today!

Earth Time

Geological Time is the measurement of earth’s timeline by the layers of its crust. It records units of time in ages, epochs, periods, eras, and eons. The Meghalayan age began 4,200 years ago. The Holocene epoch began 11,700 years ago. According to National Geographic.org geologists are discussing a new unit of geologic time to describe the most-

-recent period when human activity began to impact ecosystems. Stay with me, I am not spouting political slander here on climate change. I am only sharing thoughts about the challenges of geologists as they attempt to identify units of measurement by layers of the earth’s crust to record the planet’s history on a timeline. Conversations began decades ago between geologists and researchers about how a dramatic increase in human activity has affected the planet. Adopting the term Anthropocene epoch will continue being discussed as a different time period from the Holocene epoch until the conclusion is reached of “when” it was reflected in the rock strata, the basis for geologic time. It is being debated if it was the beginning of the Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago or as recent as the 1960’s, the 1800’s when the Industrial Revolution dramatically increased the carbon and methane levels, or the first atomic bomb testing in 1945 and then the use of them resulting in radioactive particles detected in soil samples globally. There has also been mention of the impact of our global economy impacting the Earth systems about the time it began in the 1950’s. I imagine it will not be successfully negotiated before the end of another age. This is fascinating to me to think that humans may have notably altered a measurement of time. It also allows one to perceive how time marches on into infinity and is in fact astronomical in relation to our brief time as inhabitants upon the planet. Whew. That is lofty thinking. Let’s come back to the moment and something more simple.

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

J.R.R. Tolkien -The Fellowship of the Rings

Saving Time

As domestic engineers, once known as housewives, we performed all of the things necessary to keep a household running in the hours allotted. It is a myth that as more labor saving devices were introduced to the home, that the amount of labor decreased. It was proven that the labor actually increased as MORE work could be performed in a day. One can imagine the first self cleaning oven. Yay, I just have to wipe it when it is done, so now I can mop the floors while it cleans! The robot vacuum went off on its own expeditions around the house, and required to be emptied at least ten times more than the upright. The dishwasher in every home did not load or unload itself and the garbage disposal needed repair often, in addition to replacing the spoons that it chewed up. I did not and have not ever had any of the above. This is not meant to sound as though I am in judgment of those who have utilized techniques to manage their time as they wish. Time can be spent with purpose at a pace that allows us to be in charge of it. But time cannot be saved. Hiring household help is the only method I think that allows you to spend less time performing your household chores.

Sixty years ago Bob Dylan wrote the song, The Times They Are A-Changin’ to echo the frustration of youth who felt excluded from society. This was a protest song and not viewed completely favorably worldwide. I suspect the message that the youth were ready to take over and for adults to get out of the way had something to do with the song being met with some ire. I was that time’s youth, today I am the one being asked to step aside, because history repeats itself. Time is unlike other concepts. It does not change. Guidelines that represent shifting popular opinions can mysteriously seep into our thoughts unnoticed, altering our patterns. These social norms then create our changing times. We structure a part of our life by it but then the trend mysteriously fades away, evolving into the next one. One example would be women’s attire in public. Long dresses slowly gave way to shorter ones until one day social norms allowed the more casual look of pants. Unfortunately for me, prior to public schools revising the dress code I was repeatedly sent to the principal’s office by the playground teacher for wearing cutoffs under my skirt. I celebrate the acceptance of my jeans and fly them proudly on my clothesline. I do not celebrate a trend however, that I am surrounded by today. I recently returned to a lunch stop that had a nice ambiance and every table was seated with expressionless faces staring at the phone in their hand. So, I am wondering if we are witnessing a trend of preference for artificial intelligence to human interaction. Is this the end of intimate gatherings of smiles, eye contact and enjoyable conversations in public settings? Before this trend becomes the foundation for the future, let me please comment that it has been proven through time, that we need each other. Time is a silent element but a powerful means to reveal things. If you want me to get out of the way or get on board with this concept of disregarding human presence, I am afraid I will not go quietly. I will enter the said, lovely lunch place quietly then I will jump up on my table yelling, ”I will not support a movement that basically disintegrates social connection, the vital characteristic of community” to divide your attention from your devices at the cost of embarrassing myself, to get you to move your phone away from your face so I can see it and you can see mine. This will also cause you to complain to your table mates, thus engaging you to one another. Mission accomplished. Be here now.

Your Time

…is this moment, this minute, this year. Be present. Live. Engage. Care. Love. These are verbs. Check that box…I am NOT a robot and prove it. Today’s date does not repeat itself. Let me repeat that. Today’s date does not repeat itself. Have a delightful date with today. Yahoo, I’ve got a date! What has happened to that dang dating pool anyway?