A different perspective on time

A different perspective on time

Its the end of the weekend and I'm supposed to be tidying my office and planning for the week to come.  I just can't resist sharing this with you.  I have found, maybe you do too, that inspiration can come from the most unlikely sources - in this case it is a childrens' story.  Now before I tell you more about the story just stop a while and hold this thought for the coming week.  In this world of high speed connection, downloads, instant messaging, text replies that seem to appear almost before you've sent your own message, deadlines and demands on your time, how many clocks do you need and what do they really tell you? 

I stopped wearing  a watch years ago  - I had a very nice watch that sadly got broken and when my wife offered to replace it I thought about it and decided that what with my alarm clock, the clocks in the kitchen, the oven, the VCR, my car, my mobile phone, my PDA, my computer and my office plus all those clocks in shops, railway stations and on public buildings - I had quite enough to tell me the time when I needed to know!

"seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, seasons, years...time is just too big to fit inside a clock" (from My Grandmothers Clock)

Over the last few years I have come to reflect that we are obsessed with time - deadlines I've already mentioned, but also how much time we spend on things and whether we are being efficient, how we can save time, how fast we can get somewhere. 

In "My Grandmothers Clock", the childrens' book I mentioned earlier, I was reminded that there are so many more imaginative and fulfilling ways in which we can measure and mark time like the movement of the sun, the phases of the moon, the passing of the seasons, the growth of new generations, the grey hairs on our heads, the birthdays of friends and family, or something as simple as the time it takes to walk the dog or for the bathwater to go cold.

All of these are reflections of our energy and whether we have invested it wisely or not.

Check out "My Grandmothers Clock" and be inspired...

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 11 September 2007 )