TIME MARCHES ON

by William J. Bausch

New Year's Day

Daniel Boorstin, the historian, says that one of the most significant inventions of all times is the mechanical clock. To be sure, there were sand clocks and water clocks and sun clocks and candle clocks for many millennia, but with the mechanical clock the human race incorporated the night hours into its schedules. And that was momentous. For, up to that time, night was a time to eat, to tell stories, and to sleep. Jesus, living in the pre-mechanical time, makes reference to that in one of his speeches. He says, "Night time comes when no one can work." Now we say, "Work and shop until you drop at the stores, and factories open 24 hours a day."

The first mechanical clock depended on weights whose motion was controlled by gravity to fall in a measured way to drive the hand. You should know, by the way, that, as late as 1500 of our era, there were no minutes or seconds on clocks. The clocks only told the hours or, to be more precise, they sounded the hours because the average citizen could hardly afford one of those contraptions so they depended on listening to the clock in the town square that the town had erected. Which is why all those old towns always had large clocks even when people owned their own. You may recall, for instance, the prominent clock in the town square in the Back to the Future movies.

Today we have atomic clocks that measure time in millionths of a second. I often wonder how we would live with no second or minute hands on our clocks. Would we live more leisurely? Be more sensitive to the arc of the sun? The passage of the planet? Would some of the pressure of our lives disappear? Would we have a better day if we had only the hours and not the minutes and seconds? Not likely, I'm afraid. We're too programmed to work and "be on the go" - a badge of success - 24 hours a day.

It comes as no surprise that the number of Americans holding two or more jobs has grown 88 percent in 25 years. Some do this out of dire need; for most, however, the primary motivation, as studies have shown, is consumption. Our society honors the four-job family that labors hard to provide a big back yard, lots of bathrooms, and plenty of automobiles. Americans, who today work more hours than ever before in history, spend nearly four times as many hours a year shopping as do Western Europeans. And while the average paid vacation in Europe, Sweden, and Britain is from four to six weeks, for Americans it is only two weeks.

This is why stress, a term borrowed from engineering, is killing more of us than AIDS. The doctors of the American Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine believe that 74 to 90 percent of all reported diseases are due in part to stress. We certainly must take note that three best-selling prescription drugs in America are Valium for relaxation, Inderal for high blood pressure, and Tagamet for ulcers. Depression too is widespread. The scientists, interestingly, give several reasons for its epidemic proportions. One, they say, is a decline in the belief in God and the afterlife. This means that time is never redeemed. Another, understandably, is broken families. A final reason they give is the fast pace of life which leaves no time for the human organism to repair itself.

All the more reason, then, to note that the mechanical clock, like most discoveries, was designed to meet quite a different need. In this case, the need was the duty of the medieval monks to pray at set times of the day: the third, the sixth, and the ninth hour, and so on. Ironically, the dock takes on a different role today. It does not summon us to prayer, but tempts us to fill every hour, every minute, and every second of our lives with a thousand bits of busyness that leave us no time for our God and for ourselves. And advertisers, like the Mad Hatter, add to the problem by rushing time for us. In July they advertise back to school sales; in September, Christmas gifts; on Ash Wednesday, Easter finery; in May, summer sales. They move us constantly round and round like squirrels on a wheel never giving us the time to savor the current celebration and mystery in the hot economic pursuit of the next. It is no wonder that "I never have enough time" is the universal American cry. As someone remarked, "Twenty-five years ago, people were asking, 'How can I get to heaven?' Today they are asking, 'How can I get through the day?"'

In this context, the digital clock takes on the deeper meaning of disconnectedness. Digital clocks tell us what time it is now. They don't tell us about the past or about the future like a watch that has a face on it. It simply describes the present, right now. To that extent it becomes a metaphor for the Now Generation: no past, no future. Only now. People become what we call "digital livers." They want it all now. They thrive on instant gratification. They are a rootless, hurried people looking at a digital watch that gives no clue to the past or future. As someone wrote in a rather cynical poem:

So, our human question, our religious question: where do relationships fit in such a time-tyrannizing world? No place or in a very little place?

These stories make me think of Barbara Bush's address to Wellesley College in which she said to the graduates, "As important as your obligation as a doctor, a lawyer, or a business leader may be, your human connections with your spouse, your children and your friends are the most important investment you will ever make. At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal, but you will regret time not spent with your spouse, your children or your friends."

So the clock, which started out as servant to the soul, has evolved into its demanding taskmaster. The mechanical clock which started out to intone the hours for prayer and solitude has evolved into a giant press squeezing out those very things from our lives.

New Year's Day has provoked these reflections, of course. But New Year's does mean that we have another gift of time, a finite gift to be sure. It won't always be there. We have 365 days ahead of us to...to do what? To rush, to run, to acquire, to abandon loved ones in the pursuit of what we call "the better life"? Or to be frequently summoned to prayer, wonderment, contemplation, and relationships? A New Year is an opportunity, not renewable, to become what we were meant to be, and it will be parceled out by clocks, mechanical, faced, digital; they are all there to measure time and to remind us what a limited and precious resource it is for us all. And so, let us pray:

(From Storytelling the Word, pp. 212-216)