Sunday, November 9, 2008
Looking at the Sun
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An analogy for what it feels like to be "emerging"...
For my entire life, I have told time by watch. Every morning I strapped in to my wrist, wore it faithfully throughout the day, checking back frequently to see if I was on track, on time, and keeping up.
But then I started to notice that sometimes my watch wasn't accurate; the time it had conflicted with the time someone else had - even though our watches were made by the same company. Sometimes the battery would go dead; or when I traveled far away, I would have to reset my watch to fit the new time zone. It was still reliable, and I still used it a lot, but I realized that it was also fallible if not used properly.
And then I started to think about time, and how it is really a human creation of sorts. I mean, what is a minute, or a second, or an hour or even a day? These are just arbitrary words associated with arbitrary intervals that allow us to govern our day, to give us control and a sense of civility. But what really is time?
Time is change - one event, and then another, and then another. And for centuries, the way that humans have regularly measured the passing of time (or the continuing changing of events) is by looking up at the sun. The sun and the earth are in a constant relationship that reliably offers all the necessary information for what "time" it is. But humans developed technology that would tell time for us so we didn't have to look up at the sun; so we would have clear terms and definitions; so that we could sport our time-telling abilities on our wrist in style.
But now that I've cast off my watch for the sake of looking only to the sun, I've lost the tool that I had grown so accustomed to. I find myself naturally looking down at my wrist to see what time it is, only to see my naked arm as a stark reminder that I can no longer rely upon human devices, but I have to look in the other direction: up, to the sun. And even though it hurts my eyes, and I'm disoriented and often uncertain and confused, I know that as I look to the sky I am re-orienting my sense of "time" on the truest and most reliable source.
An analogy for what it feels like to be "emerging"...For my entire life, I have told time by watch. Every morning I strapped in to my wrist, wore it faithfully throughout the day, checking back frequently to see if I was on track, on time, and keeping up.
But then I started to notice that sometimes my watch wasn't accurate; the time it had conflicted with the time someone else had - even though our watches were made by the same company. Sometimes the battery would go dead; or when I traveled far away, I would have to reset my watch to fit the new time zone. It was still reliable, and I still used it a lot, but I realized that it was also fallible if not used properly.
And then I started to think about time, and how it is really a human creation of sorts. I mean, what is a minute, or a second, or an hour or even a day? These are just arbitrary words associated with arbitrary intervals that allow us to govern our day, to give us control and a sense of civility. But what really is time?
Time is change - one event, and then another, and then another. And for centuries, the way that humans have regularly measured the passing of time (or the continuing changing of events) is by looking up at the sun. The sun and the earth are in a constant relationship that reliably offers all the necessary information for what "time" it is. But humans developed technology that would tell time for us so we didn't have to look up at the sun; so we would have clear terms and definitions; so that we could sport our time-telling abilities on our wrist in style.
But now that I've cast off my watch for the sake of looking only to the sun, I've lost the tool that I had grown so accustomed to. I find myself naturally looking down at my wrist to see what time it is, only to see my naked arm as a stark reminder that I can no longer rely upon human devices, but I have to look in the other direction: up, to the sun. And even though it hurts my eyes, and I'm disoriented and often uncertain and confused, I know that as I look to the sky I am re-orienting my sense of "time" on the truest and most reliable source.
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