The passage of time is something I think about a lot. How much time has to pass until you move on. How much time has to pass until you reach your goal. How much time has to pass until it doesn’t hurt so much.Throughout my life I’ve measured time in a myriad of ways. In months, years, seconds, hours, minutes. I wear a watch at all times and consider my progress “done” when the big Zeiger moves a little further to the left. Lately I’ve taken to measuring time in weeks and major life events. My birthday week. The week before Ramadan. The week I started going to the gym. The week I took up meditating. The week I finished a book. What started as a coping mechanism quickly became a way of life. But it also got me thinking a lot about what it means to move forward? What does it mean to move through time?

When you’re in a healing phase people begin bringing up time a lot. You hear the age-old “it all gets better with time” at every turn and are thrown countless first-hand experiences about how episodes in people’s lives all “got better with time”. And yet, the more I talk to people the more I realize that life is not linear, our “progress” cannot be measured in x amount of hrs or days. We take as many steps “back” as we do “forward”. So, is time active or passive? Is it something that happens to us? Is it something we happen to?

In the past few weeks I’ve taken to measuring time in episodes. One more episode until I go rehearse my piano. One more episode before bed. It’s a bit of a fucked up way to measure time, but it is one that’s making me happy. If we measure life in experiences, I believe that there is a “forwards”, an active moving through time. Because if you think about it, we are always amassing experiences every minute of the day. With every ticking of that clock we are gathering impressions and making decisions.So, does time really heal all wounds?

The verdict is out. I’ve often thought that there is some kind of original instinct we should rely on/tap into in order to heal. I believe in the big “aha” over the slow drone of moving “forward”. And yet, I have begun to see the value in giving everything a week or a year. Time is relative so it really depends on your perspective. Remember when you were little and time would move so fast as you approached bedtime and then as you grew up you would be counting the seconds until class was over? Every person experiences time differently and I guess that’s what it’s really all about.

Now I’m late to an appointment with myself so I will have to sign out (what does being perpetually late imply about my relationship to time?), but please let me know what is your relationship to time? Do you feel that it moves forwards?

Belatedly yours,  

Girl With One Earring