Unfortunately, time has stopped.
This may surprise you, because time is seemingly omnipresent and has governed our lives for so long, but the thing about time is that it’s completely arbitrary and cares not for what humans characterize as “possible.”
How do we know it has stopped, you ask? That’s the thing: we don’t. One day, someone created the concept of time. Today we are erasing it. Why? Because it feels right. Because we are tired of following these ancient rules of the universe. Because we can.
Who decided that today would be a Monday, the first of seven days in a week? Who decided there would be twenty-four hours in a day and sixty seconds in a minute and 365 days in a year? What is a year, anyways? Why twelve months? Who chose the number twelve? What even is a month? Why do some have thirty days and some thirty-one and one twenty-eight except for every four years when it has twenty-nine?
Yes, of course there are rules. But who made the rules? The universe has given us nothing. We have forcefully taken its machinations and twisted them for ourselves and now act as though they are irrefutable truths that have been built into our veins.
Well, not anymore.
Some vague concept of time will still exist and always will, but we’ve abolished the rules that humanity has followed since our feet first dug into the sand. There will be no more seconds, minutes, hours, days. No more decades, centuries, millenia, eons.
There will be no need to snooze your alarm for nine minutes. Instead, sleep until your heart beats another hundred times. Don’t make plans to meet your friend in a month, plan to get together next time the temperature is exactly seventy degrees. Dinner is no longer at seven p.m., it’s served as soon as the shadow of the backyard tree stretches to touch the house. The weekend lasts until the next thunderstorm, however long that may be.
It will be difficult at first, but we will adapt. Humanity is good at that, but we have been losing touch with what we are supposed to be due to these arbitrary rules we use to box ourselves in. Why must there be a specific date for the end of summer? Why can’t it be killed by the first chill in the air, or the first bloom of nostalgia in your chest?
All around us, nature thrives, untouched by the concept of time. The tiger hunts not because it is lunchtime, but because it is hungry. The lizard lounges on a sun-baked rock not for eight hours, but until its cool blood is finally warmed. The salmon does not migrate because the calendar directs it to but when its soul does. Their lives are simpler. They are not preoccupied with missing their morning train, a meeting at noon, or a television program at six p.m.
It is time for us to follow in their footsteps.
There will be no more clocks, at least in the traditional sense, ones with a hand for the minutes and one for the hours steadily ticking down 43,200 seconds, 720 minutes, twelve hours and then repeating it forever and ever.
There will be no more calendars, no more flipping the page after mourning the death of a month, no more counting the days until appointments and anniversaries and deadlines. Go to the dentist next time your son is wearing red shoes. Turn in your project as soon as you see a weed growing through a crack in the sidewalk. How long have you been married? Since the last solar eclipse. Since the scratch appeared on the side of your car. Since you stopped wearing red lipstick.
It is impossible to measure life in time. It is something that cannot be harnessed and sculpted and shoved into the seconds of eternity.
There is no time anymore, no schedule, no age. How old are you? Old enough to remember the earthquake that destroyed an island. Old enough to recognize a record player. Old enough to see the veins in the back of your hand. When did you graduate? The spring before the sadness began. When was the last time your soul sang? After you read that poem, the one about the flower petals in sunlight.
And now we are truly setting you free, free from the bonds of time, free from the jail of endless passing hours, free to follow only the directions of your own soul. Where will you go? What will you do?
Will you sleep until the third chirp of the yellow bird? Will you dance in the rain until the rushing water steals your shoes? Will you kneel by the fire for as long as your cracking skin will allow? Will you walk into the night until your eyes can no longer find the path?
Who will you become?
That is up to you.
This may surprise you, because time is seemingly omnipresent and has governed our lives for so long, but the thing about time is that it’s completely arbitrary and cares not for what humans characterize as “possible.”
How do we know it has stopped, you ask? That’s the thing: we don’t. One day, someone created the concept of time. Today we are erasing it. Why? Because it feels right. Because we are tired of following these ancient rules of the universe. Because we can.
Who decided that today would be a Monday, the first of seven days in a week? Who decided there would be twenty-four hours in a day and sixty seconds in a minute and 365 days in a year? What is a year, anyways? Why twelve months? Who chose the number twelve? What even is a month? Why do some have thirty days and some thirty-one and one twenty-eight except for every four years when it has twenty-nine?
Yes, of course there are rules. But who made the rules? The universe has given us nothing. We have forcefully taken its machinations and twisted them for ourselves and now act as though they are irrefutable truths that have been built into our veins.
Well, not anymore.
Some vague concept of time will still exist and always will, but we’ve abolished the rules that humanity has followed since our feet first dug into the sand. There will be no more seconds, minutes, hours, days. No more decades, centuries, millenia, eons.
There will be no need to snooze your alarm for nine minutes. Instead, sleep until your heart beats another hundred times. Don’t make plans to meet your friend in a month, plan to get together next time the temperature is exactly seventy degrees. Dinner is no longer at seven p.m., it’s served as soon as the shadow of the backyard tree stretches to touch the house. The weekend lasts until the next thunderstorm, however long that may be.
It will be difficult at first, but we will adapt. Humanity is good at that, but we have been losing touch with what we are supposed to be due to these arbitrary rules we use to box ourselves in. Why must there be a specific date for the end of summer? Why can’t it be killed by the first chill in the air, or the first bloom of nostalgia in your chest?
All around us, nature thrives, untouched by the concept of time. The tiger hunts not because it is lunchtime, but because it is hungry. The lizard lounges on a sun-baked rock not for eight hours, but until its cool blood is finally warmed. The salmon does not migrate because the calendar directs it to but when its soul does. Their lives are simpler. They are not preoccupied with missing their morning train, a meeting at noon, or a television program at six p.m.
It is time for us to follow in their footsteps.
There will be no more clocks, at least in the traditional sense, ones with a hand for the minutes and one for the hours steadily ticking down 43,200 seconds, 720 minutes, twelve hours and then repeating it forever and ever.
There will be no more calendars, no more flipping the page after mourning the death of a month, no more counting the days until appointments and anniversaries and deadlines. Go to the dentist next time your son is wearing red shoes. Turn in your project as soon as you see a weed growing through a crack in the sidewalk. How long have you been married? Since the last solar eclipse. Since the scratch appeared on the side of your car. Since you stopped wearing red lipstick.
It is impossible to measure life in time. It is something that cannot be harnessed and sculpted and shoved into the seconds of eternity.
There is no time anymore, no schedule, no age. How old are you? Old enough to remember the earthquake that destroyed an island. Old enough to recognize a record player. Old enough to see the veins in the back of your hand. When did you graduate? The spring before the sadness began. When was the last time your soul sang? After you read that poem, the one about the flower petals in sunlight.
And now we are truly setting you free, free from the bonds of time, free from the jail of endless passing hours, free to follow only the directions of your own soul. Where will you go? What will you do?
Will you sleep until the third chirp of the yellow bird? Will you dance in the rain until the rushing water steals your shoes? Will you kneel by the fire for as long as your cracking skin will allow? Will you walk into the night until your eyes can no longer find the path?
Who will you become?
That is up to you.