TIME SUCKS

Alternative Press-Elise Amendola

Time. Sucks. The whole popular concept of it is whacked out. Sure, it makes sense to rise with the sun and probably sleep sometime after it gets dark. There's no problem with daylight or the lack of it when night creeps in. It's what we do and how we think of things in between. Somewhere along the line people thought it was a great idea to use calendars and clocks and create definite boundaries on time itself..something actually boundless. How many times do we go into a job and end up being clockwatchers? We work halfheartedly (or better than that if we can afford) and kill the hours away until our 'freedom'. For many of us, we are paid hourly wages and even when it doesn't make sense to be at work certain times, we will make excuses to stay and find menial tasks to fill up the time, just to get enough 'hours'. The whole idea that our time is worth money, and money is a fair trade is absurd. You can always find 5 dollars lying on the ground, when will you even get 5 minutes back? Money comes and goes...time constantly gets lost. Sure, people have to work to live, right? Work doesn't have to mean the kind involving a job and money though. Why not just live, and build the framework around life itself? Why does money have to always be a middleman?

Animals don't show up 5 minutes 'late' for a 'shift'. They eat when they need to, they drink when they need to, they sleep when they need to. We are always distracted by clocks and our idea of time, enough to the extent that we rob ourselves of time! Everyone's in a hurry to get nowhere. Appointments are made, sure I guess we need some structure right? Did the witch doctor or shaman need an appointment if you were in his village? Would he see if he could 'squeeze' or 'work you in' for next week? Maybe there were times he was busy and you'd have to return. People unconsciously do things to the nearest quarter hour, half hour, full hour mark point. We seldom choose to go to sleep at 11:23 pm over 11:30 pm. Boom, so we kill 7 minutes before then without realizing it, just because 11:30 is an easier point to mark in our minds. What about calendar dates? Someone wants to quit smoking, but it always has to be a 'special' time. "I'll quit smoking New Year's Day, that's my New Year's resolution," they'll say. Or "I'll quit on my birthday." In an attempt to establish special meaning for these days, (or even the hours within them), we make it ok to waste time in the meantime because it's not 'special enough' or 'right enough'. Every second should be special.

Time is infinite and circular, but that doesn't mean OUR time is infinite in the current life we live. The only way we can measure time is by changes in ourselves and our surroundings. No changes and time would appear to freeze. So in a way it never runs out, but WE run out physically. We owe it to ourselves to treat all of our countdown towards our own death as special. This does not involve cramming a schedule with 144,000 tasks a day which may or may not be important in the end. It's quality versus quantity. The irony is if we remove our notion of time and stop using the word, we gain more time than ever. If time is the concept we think about constantly, we never have enough of it....