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Michael's Metaphors of Life Journal

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Clocks Ticking – Wheels Spinning – Memory Slipping

October 14th, 2012 by Michael Dyet

Hmmm, has the way we experience time changed in this modern age where we succeed or fail by the ticks of the clock?

Every now and then someone asks me one of those “how long” questions. How long have you lived in Brampton? How long have you been attending your church? How old is your cat? These are routine questions that should be easy to answer.

The truth is I don’t remember the “how long” figures for those things. I think perhaps I should do the math so I don’t have to keep saying “Sorry, I don’t remember”. But I can’t seem to find a reliable point of reference from which to work.

There are some “how long” questions that I can answer. How long have you worked here? 11 years. How long you have lived in this building? 8 years. I remember these particular things because they are time-stamped by significant events.

9/11 happened a few months after I started working at my present employer. I’m not likely ever to forget that year.

I moved into this building when my ex and I split up. The year is inscribed on our separation agreement which resides in my important documents box should I ever need to be reminded.

It seems I need these time stamps to keep track of the chronology of my life. It could be that my memory is losing its edge as I get older. The body slows down as the decades pass so it stands to reason that the brain does as well. But I’m not convinced that is the one and only answer.

Life comes at us at an accelerated pace these days. Quite often, it seems I struggle just to keep up. It is all I can manage (and sometimes I don’t manage) to remember the deadlines and the “no later than” dates that I can’t afford to miss in the next week.

I seem to be running – literally and figuratively – a good percentage of the time to keep up with the pace of life. One of my all-time favourite comic strip scenes is a single frame Ziggy comic. Ziggy is sitting at a desk surrounded by stacks of paper. The caption reads:

I’m going to stop trying to get ahead so I can slow down the rate at which I’m falling behind.

That sentiment has come to characterize the way I feel about life. “Catching up with life” has become the name of the game.

My hypothesis is that we experience time much differently than we used to. Originally, time was the way we measured our existence and put it in perspective. It kept us grounded and allowed us to feel we had a place in history.

But, in the 21st century, time has become the enemy. We’re always on the clock scratching and clawing our way to keep from falling behind. Time is now the way we measure success or failure. Success equals being able to do more in an hour than the person in the next cubicle. Failure is being on the wrong end of that equation.

If I had to pick a metaphor for time as we experience it now, it would be wheels spinning in the sand. We never seem to get enough traction to catch up.

Perhaps it is not so surprising that I can’t answer some of the “how long” questions. Too many of my brains cells are occupied with calculating “how soon”, “by when” and “how much time do I have left”. The clock keeps ticking, my wheels keep spinning and my over taxed memory keeps on slipping.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.

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