Now I know how to stop time.
Yes, you heard me right, stop time.
Time is a strange thing. Those who have it don’t know what to do with it, and those who are short of it never have enough.
Early humans had just the day and the night to go by. Then, they tried to measure it better. Some watched the sun to map it, and some followed the moon. From sundials and pendulums to modern quartz, humanity got better and every step, accuracy improved.
Today, however, it is the humble hourglass that makes it into my story.
The ancient wise men devised the hourglass to track time. Mariners used it for measuring the speed of their ships, priests used them to keep track of their sermon times, and housewives for knowing cooking times, at least for smaller increments. After the fifteenth century, however, they lost their place in daily life.
Looking at it today, I can say that the hourglasses are easily the rawest indicator of the philosophical truth that all life is just some grains of sand slipping away.
Place it on your table and watch the sand fall in a steady dribble—there is nothing more excruciating. It will test your patience. It will make you jumpy. Do this, and you will hear the noise in your head.
It was a weekend, and my niece was at my house. It was playtime, and the ideas crammed into that little mind of hers were exploding.
Everything on the corner stand was a potential toy: a framed photograph, a pen, and a yoga mat were all drafted into her games. This weekend, she unearthed a plastic fish and two hourglasses.
The fish was pink, with eyes that were bright and naughty. The hourglasses were the cheap, plastic type. She probably had no idea what they did, or how horrible those two devices truly were.
Suddenly, she fetched a bowl of water, deciding that the fish needed a bath. I agreed, as the pink color had grown dull from spending a few days under the sofa. The fish was given a good scrub and was soon looking fresh.
And then, she got her next idea.
The hourglasses went into the bowl. She was quick, and I failed to intercept the move. Both hourglasses sank to the bottom.
Water seeped through the cheap plastic seams, and the sand within grew soaked and heavy.
While I began to tutor her on why she shouldn’t do such things, she looked up at me. With a sparkle in her eyes and a smile that could melt stone, she pulled them out of the water.
“It stopped,” she noted dryly.
Inside the glass, the sand was wet and clumped. The fight had gone out of it. And yes, time had stopped.
She had taught me how to read a clock last year, and now she had bettered her own lesson. This time, she had frozen the devil that time is. ( Read From Sundials to “Long Stick at 6”: Mastering Clocks Like a Child )
I smiled, imagining how I would go out, buy an hourglass, and carry it with me. Whenever life became too overwhelming, I would simply look for a bowl of water.
She seemed to be pretty impressed with the idea of what she had achieved , and I, for one, agreed. While it may be a fantasy to have beaten time, it still was one fantasy where you could spend some time in wishful thinking.
We spend our lives as prisoners to the relentless gravity of those grains of sand. Now, today, tomorrow, and then the day after—life just stretches out into the uncertain.
Today is, as I often say, a tomorrow that we destroyed by thinking about it yesterday.
We treat time as a linear master, a strict sequence of falling grains that dictates our worth and measures our decay. But a child’s innocence sees past the illusion of this theory. By drowning the clock, she had revealed that time is not an absolute law, but a state of mind.
When we allow ourselves to become fully immersed in the present—submerging our anxieties and soaking in the immediate beauty of existence—the frantic trickle of life clumps together and freezes.
To stop time, we do not need to alter the cosmos; we only need to disrupt the momentum of our own minds, finding the stillness that exists when we finally refuse to let the next grain fall.
And yes, you need a toddler niece and her impish smile to help you discover the secrets of life, albeit a little too late.
Better late than never.
Thanks Tams
