On Time and In a Hurry

Posted: 2009-12-18 14:13:39

The other morning, Ethan had a field trip to get to by 8am, or the bus would leave without him. Amber usually doesn't get him to school until after 9 on most days, so 8am was an endeavor beyond anything we'd attempted before. As luck would have it, this was also one of the rare occasions that Ethan decided to sleep past 6:30... all the way to 7:15. Though normally this would be glorious, this day of all days it was frustrating.

So, we get him up, actually physically shaking him to get him out of his abnormally deep sleep, into some clothes while he was probably still dreaming, and plopped down at the table for some breakfast. All the while we were urging him along, telling him we didn't want to be late, that the bus would leave without him. Ethan was blissfully oblivious to the whole thing, not comprehending the meaning of "hurry" or what "being late" even was. As far as he was concerned, this morning was like any other, and school would star whenever he got there.

This is what really got me thinking, which I often have time to do on my .6 mile walk to the blue line in the mornings. Time is a very two-sided concept: On one hand, it has always been here, passing in linear fashion since the beginning of the world, universe, and beyond. On the other hand, time in a modern sense is a very man-made concept. We've taken an abstract thing and placed upon it a measurement created to suit the cycles of the earth (more or less). We've dreamed of altering time, but generally viewed it as unalterable. And yet, despite being man-made, it is something that has to be taught to children.

For a 3-year-old, sometimes it's light out, sometimes dark; sometimes you take a nap, but other times you go to bed; and occasionally you don't have to go to school, but most of the time you do. I don't think he really relates the happenings of his life to a normal cyclical occurrence, because sometimes he gets confused about which is taking a nap in the middle of the day as opposed to going to bed at night. He sometimes thinks that it's time to go to bed just because it's an overcast day and dark out by 2pm.

This whole thing got me thinking of how much pressure we feel every day because we do understand time. We can be late for something, we can miss an appointment, or show up so early that we have to play iPhone games for 45 minutes. But the greatest burden we face because of our understanding of time is that things are happening everywhere even when we are not present.

The whole basis of remorse, regret, anxiety, etc. is that an event is happening with or without us. It is inevitable, and we can't do anything to stop it or make it happen sooner. Once in a lifetime things happen only because we know that they have happened and cannot happen again, because we cannot experience something the same time twice. To a three-year-old, the only thing happening is what his worldview is, but to us, we have to constantly know that everyone else out there is experiencing something different than us all the time.

So, I pose a question for discussion: Which would you prefer? Is it easier to understand only the present, or is it more fulfilling to know the past and future?