From the Mind of Merc - Time

Sometimes I find my mind wandering over various eclectic topics and occasionally I am inspired to write some of them down. Ironically, given the topic of my current musings I ran out of 'time' to fully develop what I was thinking (but I'll give it a go).

One thing that I find remarkable is the way in which human beings seem to possess the ability to make sense out of chaos.

Put on this teeny tiny planet in the middle of nowhere yet we create something called ‘civilisation’ – we make something out of nothing – we build homes and not only that but we work on developing these homes. We set up systems for measuring our existence in chunks of what we call time and we give them names – seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years.

However, the bureaucracy inherent in our self-imposed system seems determined to turn this against us to the effect that the results of our ingenious creations can increasingly be seen to be the enemy of common sense.

We have set up this ingenious idea of time but yet this is used in such a way that it affects our health or impacts on us in a negative way to the detriment of our own lives. It is imposed on us in a way that produces stress and has a negative effect on our health. We face deadlines, set timetables, give ultimatums, set time limits – basically confine and restrict ourselves to following a nerve-wracking, panic-inducing set of appointments and timings making us miserable, stressed, unfulfilled and generally failing to appreciate just how amazing we and life can actually be.

The only motivation in the way of time should be a sense of our own mortality – the need to accomplish our desired tasks or acquire our desired skills while we still are able – not deadlines enforced on us by contrived guidelines and particularly not by those who would not endure them themselves.

Life is for living – not for wasting or ‘enduring’ and ultimately the ludicrousness of this and the effect it has on our system can be most adequately expressed by the late, great Dave Allen:

“We live our life to the clock – you wake to the clock, you got to work to the clock, you clock into the clock, you clock out to the clock, you come home to the clock, you eat to the clock, you drink to the clock, you go to bed to the clock, you get up to the clock, you go back to work to the clock. You do that for 40 years of your life, you retire, what do they f---ing give you? A clock!”