Did we bind ourselves to time?
Birds and animals follow the rhythm of nature and seasons to survive.
Humans, however invented linear time through clocks and calendars because we needed to synchronize with each other.
But in doing so did we unknowingly bind ourselves to time?
For example, world over people suffer Monday blues. But, on a Monday the sun rises the same way as it did on a Friday or Saturday.
The difference lies in the collective meaning & obligations we have assigned to them.
Before mechanical clocks, our ancestors lived by two clocks: the cosmic clock outside us—the sun, moon, and seasons—and the biological clock within us—our circadian rhythms.
Natural light signaled the body when to wake and when to rest, triggering the release of cortisol at sunrise to promote alertness and melatonin after sunset to prepare the body for sleep.
With the rise of linear time, we subdued this biological intelligence.
We flood our nights with artificial light, tricking the brain into thinking it's daytime, and rely on alarms to wake us when our bodies may still be asking for sleep.
Modern medicine calls this circadian disruption—a growing disconnect between biological time and clock time.
Today, we no longer eat because we are hungry; we eat because it is 12:00 or 1:00 PM.
We no longer sleep because we are tired; we sleep because the clock says it is bedtime.
Did we even bound our biology to a mechanical grid?
When my brother and I moved into our new home, we decided to keep it extremely minimal.
One of the things we chose not to put up was a calendar. For the first few days, we kept asking each other, "What day is it today?" We genuinely lost track. I never even knew when Saturday arrived.
But, apart from the tracking part, the experience was liberating. Now, we have kept a calendar but it’s hidden. 😊
We invented time to track events. Then we learned how to spend time, save time, sell time, manage time—and eventually, we even began to kill time. We have heard the phrase: I did not know how to kill time?
Natural time is experienced. Social time is agreed upon.
My question to my readers is did we stop using time as a tool and started allowing it to use us?
Leave your comments & feedback on whisperforpeace@gmail.com
