It's about time

I can't believe it's mid-October already. Time is flying by. It seems I turn on my computer in the morning and the next thing I know it's mid-afternoon. It seems like I just turn a new page on the calendar and in no time I'm having to do it again. Some people say "time flies when you're having fun" and others say "the older you get the faster time goes". Now I know that time really does not go any faster nor does it go any slower depending on your behavior or your age. But it sure can seem like it does.

Time is a funny concept. In Western culture time is viewed as a commodity--something that can be "wasted", "gained", or "spent". It is a linear system. We are dependent on schedules and appointments. Although we may value multi-tasking, we allot "chunks" of our time for accomplishing specific tasks. Other cultures view time more wholistically. While they may be attending to one task, time is always trumped by the social relationship at hand. In these cultures you may not even have a pre-determined event planned to the second. A visit is over when the visit is over, not when an appointment tells you it should be over.

From another perspective, cultures can have different orientations to time. They could be past oriented (value rituals and traditions) present orientated (carpe diem) or future oriented (working now for something bigger to come later such as that which is fundamental to most Christian belief systems).

Even within cultures we have time habbits. Some people arrive at any event early. Some people are routinely late. And then there are those that are right on time. We even polarize time--are you "an early bird" or "a night owl?" BTW: I'm not a morning person and if these posts showed the actual time (date is right, but somehow not my posting time) you'd see that most of these blog entries are coming real late at night. As I'm typing it is currently 11:57 pm.

Maybe this is part of the reason we react differently to having to "setting the time" and actually getting up. Some people set their clocks ahead, some folks have clocks that are left not running or with the wrong time. And then there are those that make sure all the clocks are set to the exact time. Same holds true for how one wakes up. Some people wake up naturally when their bodies tell them they should get up. Some people have to set an alarm. There are those who set their alarm to go off at the precise time they intend to get up. While others purposely will set their alarm ahead of when they really need to be awake (usually mathmatically figured to coincide with the length of snooze button function).

So since I'm on sabbatical and time seems to be slipping away I did not set my alarm. Instead I just woke up when my body decided it should wake. I went about my day not being tied to the time although I sometimes did peer at the clock. But most importantly I "took the time" to enjoy the nice fall day by walking 3.5 miles at Charles Lindberg State Park. I guess my culture would say, that was "time well spent".