Time, by its nature, cannot be kept, but the observation of
its flight is known as timekeeping. A small child interprets the hands of the
clock. A twelve-year-old gets a watch for that birthday; a twenty-one-year old
a better watch. Some of them flash numbers, a sign of greater accuracy maybe. Carpe diem.
Time can be
kept in music, confining time to beat and measure with stick and metronome. An
hourglass times the egg’s boiling; the twenty-four-hour clock lands planes. The
watches I’ve owned time years: the one I inherited from my mother, the year
overseas, the Roman numerals I bought at the airport to keep me grounded. My
watch tells the time when it’s not there. Glance at your wrist where the watch
should be and see what happens.
Physicists
find time a real quantity, studied through mathematics. Is it true that
Buddhists and Hindus see time as circular, comprising vast ages? Since there
are many schools of philosophy, the Dalai Lama says some say past and future
are in the mind, others, abstract concepts relative to continuing events.[1]
What of the Christian, linear view of time as beginning and ending, a new
heaven and a new earth?
The present
moment exists. Time ‘to cast away the works of darkness’ — a Collect introduced
in 1549 — ‘now in the time of this mortal life’ the time to keep time in mind,
even if we cannot grasp it.
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