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How may I waste your time?
Time is a weird thing. According to science, time is a constant. If you look at a clock, that’s probably true. It doesn’t matter how you measure it—it’s still time. In France, after the Revolution, they moved to the metric system, which later caught on around the world, except for American citizens, who are totally resistant to change, and still consider the penny to be ‘real money’. Most Americans also have clocks that flash 12:00, because they didn’t keep the manual.
In the same fashion, the metric clock—divided into units of 100 minutes per hour— blew the minds of the French citizens, and time became something no one could figure out. Historical story short—it failed.
Time itself did not change, but the way we perceive time has been pretty much the same for a few hundred years, except for the French, who continue to refer to ‘heures’ and ‘minütées’.
For further information, you can order my pamphlet: Steve’s History of Time, which is pretty much what you just read.
TIME IS NOT A CONSTANT
I know I’m throwing all of my cheap Amazon degrees out the window, and forging new territories here but, despite the findings of reputable scientists, time is not a constant. Albert Einstein would agree with me because, like me, no one knew what he was talking about.
So here’s my theory. (Note that I use the Times to launch my theories, because even the editors at Scientific American read the Times.)
Remember when you were a kid? The days were endlessly long. I wandered our enormous acreage every day, with a walking stick I carved from a willow tree. I sat at our pond in the back pasture, watching the wildlife, and whacking frogs with my stick. (Hey! I was a kid! They were stunned, but survived, as far as I know.)
The point here is that time, for a kid, is somewhat meaningless. Test this: Your mom says, “Clean up your room!” This means, “This June, you should get around to this job by October.” My favorite is Mom saying, “It’s 7 a.m., time to get up!” This continues at 10 minute intervals until 8 a.m., when you get, “You’re going to miss the bus!” This has about as much importance as, “You’re late for your execution, and tardiness is not allowed! We’re trying to think of ways to punish you, before you get the lethal injection. So far, no luck.”
MOVING ON UP
As a teenager, we gain the amazing ability to never sleep. Sure, we’re packed with hormones, and the ‘sleep gene’ goes to sleep. We do the school thing, but carry on late into the night with our friends. Time with them becomes very important. My mom used to call it, “Burning the candle at both ends.” And that was true.
But we were young, and Time had no meaning. No one was watching the clock. We left each other when weariness set in. No one cared what time it was. Most of us didn’t even own watches because 1) We didn’t have any money, and b) Watches were for people with jobs, so they could know if their boss is going to say, “It’s 9:01. You’re late!”
THEN IT CHANGED
Some of us got married. Some of us took regular jobs, which had ‘time-clocks’ to make sure you were ‘on time’. Some of us had kids. Time took on a new meaning.
Suddenly, I was run by the clock. Be home at the proper time. Be at work at the proper time. Be there at 2 a.m. when your daughter has colic and can’t sleep. The clock would never again be something to ignore. It was a merciless God, forcing me to be where I was expected to be.
Time was no longer to be something I enjoyed, it was my master. I was used and abused by my employers, who lived by the clock, even though I worked until 3 a.m. making projects happen.
Then I changed it. I quit and blew up my life. And found something I loved. It hurt a lot, and eventually cost me my marriage, but, even alone, Time was mine alone, to do what I needed to do with it.
TIME TODAY
That’s a strange thing to write, as if time today is different from time yesterday. But it surely is.
The question here is: How do we use time? Not how we spend time, as if it’s currency, but how we use time. My guess is: Badly.
Scientists (not proper Amazon-certified scientists) love to announce how many hours we waste sleeping. As if sleeping is a waste of time, and not a necessary function for human survival. It is apparently thousand of hours lost in sleep each year! My scientific response is: “Yeah, that would be about right. More sleep if I could get it.” Not exactly a science blockbuster.
Add to that to the time we ‘waste’ watching TV, reading books and magazines, researching our various illnesses on the Internet, only to find out we are already dead, but didn’t know it. So here’s the problem:
Ever snce the Industrial Revolution (if you don’t recall it from memory, Google it) Time became Productive Time. In short, if you weren’t working, you were wasting time. Our whole society is based on this. Corporations block games on computers, forbid personal emails, remove family photos from your desk because these are all distractions which cut into Productive Time. God forbid you might look at a family photo and wish you were at home instead of in this slave galley you call work.
THERE IS ONE TRUE WASTE OF TIME
Cellphones. You’ve seen these people. Maybe you are one. People who can’t—for a second—stop staring at their phone and tweeting and texting. Even when they’re walking, oblivious to traffic and the world. I saw four teenagers walking in Picton—all on their cellphones, looking down and not at each other. I had to ponder: “Who are they texting? You are such a dweeb, you can’t possibly have any more friends than the three people with you. Are you texting them?”
Do they stop at some point and say, “Whoa, dude! Where am I? I wasn’t headed here. Let me Google my GPS location, and check my notebook to see where I was headed.” This is not spending time, this is filling time with useless junk, to make you think you had a productive day, talking to yourself.
I have a cellphone. It is a phone. The number is known by four people on this planet. When it rings, I check to see who’s calling. If it’s not one of them, I dismiss it. But wait, what if it’s a call from our government with an important issue? Can’t be, because under ‘cellphone number’ on every form, I write ‘none’. Besides, I want to talk to the government about as much as I want to talk to telemarketers and scammers. A simple sweep of the finger, and I control my time. Time is mine to waste, as I see fit. Now Time is on my side.
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