Keeping Time

There's an island in Norway, Sommaroy, where there is no time.  No clocks. No schedules.  Just people. People who move there hang their watches on the bridge going onto the island and there they stay.  School doesn't sound starting bells.  No one lives by any schedule.  If one were up at 3am, you might well find a football game being played on the field. Life is lived as is natural to each individual.  You sleep when you are tired.  You wake when you naturally awaken.  You eat meals at whatever hour you feel hungry...

Honestly at the moment I heard about this island, I was in a great hurry to get ready to take the grandchildren out for a special day.  I was running a little later than I'd planned...It was ironic that I heard of the place when I did.  I stopped what I was doing for a moment and seriously contemplated a life in which time had no presence.

In 2013, Mitch Albom published a fiction novel title, The Timekeeper.  It was the story of the man who became known as Father Time, and the difficulties he created for himself and others in attempting to measure the gift of Time and how attempting to do so skewed the value of a gift we were given freely from God.

I did a rather in-depth study of Genesis two years ago and I do not recall the mention of a measurement of time other than 'day' and 'night' and 'seasons'.  Ruled by the sun and moon and stars, those were the only measurements.  Hours, minutes, seconds weren't mentioned at all.  

Yet we run our lives by the count of the shorter hours, minutes, and seconds, don't we? We are appointed a time of life at our birth and a time of death when we have expired, counted  by not years, months and days, but by the hour, minute and sometimes, second hand.  We count every moment in between by these small increments.  We rush to make appointments on time; we set a time to be at nearly every life moment we will encounter and if we aren't actively setting the times then someone in our lives is likely doing it for us.

Yet for all our rushing about to 'keep time' there are moments when time passes and it means nothing.  It becomes pliable, bending to fit the moment we're in.  The first time we look into someone's eyes and fall in love, the first time we kiss that love, when we're reading a very good book, or we simply shut down and start scrolling on our phone.  The Instagram minute that turns into an hour...You know the one.  

There are days that seemingly last forever, at least three- or four-days' worth of hours when we're waiting in a hospital lobby for news.  There's the moment an accident occurs and the world literally grinds into slow motion though it takes only five seconds.  And let us not forget how slow time seemed as children when we were counting down the days until our birthday or the hours until Santa arrived.  I often think of my astonishment when I'd graduated from high school.  It took only moments to end 13 years of school and as I looked back it seemed it wasn't nearly enough to commemorate most of my life at that point.  When I looked ahead there was a vast emptiness of life yawning before me.  Time didn't exist at all in that space called 'future'.  

I gave up wearing a watch many years ago, but it did not stop me finding a means of keeping track of what time it might be.  I rise, eat, drink coffee, watch tv, go to bed and eventually go to sleep by what time is showing on a clock somewhere be it hung on a wall or on my phone.

So, when I heard of Sommaroy, I confess that my mind halted for a moment at the very idea of not following time...And then, I wondered, what if I had no way of tracking time?  How would I live?  What great changes would occur in my life?

What if there were no television or radio, no cell phone or computer with their handy little clocks, no microwave or clock on the wall?  What if I just lived without time hemming in my days?  Would I sleep better if I had no preconceived idea of what time to rise or go to bed?  If I worried less about whether I'd had enough sleep? Would I eat less if I only recognized mealtimes by the hunger I felt?  Would I worry less about the proper time to eat if hunger woke me at night and I simply got up, ate and then headed back to bed if I felt so inclined?  

How many times have I awakened at night and thought that a cup of coffee would be the most comforting thing in the world...but then looked at the phone and realized it was 2am and said, "Noooo..." and tossed and turned until the usual rising time.    What if I went out to sit on the porch and an hour or three passed but I came in rested and relaxed and soothed instead of thinking, "I need to hurry and make breakfast."  "Golly it's 10am, I need to get the bed made and start chores!"  "My gracious! I'm going to be late for my appointment!"

When we were on vacation we rose most mornings before sunrise and sat on the balcony with coffee.  I went to bed when I felt tired after dark.  One afternoon, I went to bed and slept three hours in the middle of the day without ever looking at the clock and saying, "Oh it's too late to lie down!" as I am wont to do when I'm at home.  And what's more that night I went to bed and slept like a baby despite that three-hour nap!

But everyday life?  Ruled by the ticking of the second hand, even if it's a silent digital roll of the seconds.

Let's face it...no one is passing out gold stars on the days I make my bed or if I make an appointment on time either.  And no one is giving me demerits for spending the day reading.  Or getting up at 2 am and having that cup of coffee.

Do you know what I would like to do? 

I want to stop living by the clock.  I tell you this and know that I live with a man who will glance at the clock at a set time and ask, "What's for...?" the next meal coming due.  Or who will come wake me if I've slept past 9am. Knowing there are already appointments on my calendar for this month that are ruled by time.  A child will call and say that one of the grandchildren is sick and could I please come care for them?  Or meet the bus?  If I tried to set aside just one day a week that the day I chose would be rife with minutes I was meant to do something!

It's a pipe dream, I know, but it does make me aware that I allow the clocks in my life to rule too heavily.  I can at least stop trying to hurry time along.  I can relax a little about the time that is mine and mine alone to tend, to fill it as I see fit instead of always thinking I must rush to do something that no one will notice if it's done or undone. I can give up my own desire to control this commodity and simply let it unfold.  

Just as importantly, I should not care that someone might well see me doing nothing much and say that I am 'wasting time'...  But what does it matter if I waste the time that has been allotted to me to have as my own?  Frankly I find that attitude to be a great deal like counting the money in someone else's wallet...or asking for an account of how it was spent.  It's not mine.

This evening, rather than hurry into the kitchen to prepare a meal, I've sat here facing the window and watched a lovely winter sunset.  No one has died of hunger in that space of time.  I have seen a bit of beauty and incidentally had a lovely conversation with my husband because I stopped and let time unfold...and that is a good reminder to me that this too is something I want to practice in this brand-new year, to give myself the gift of forgetting time now and then.