How long have humans used a highly quantified system to
chunk the days, and then lived by the clock?  Not very
long, actually.  It is only since the Industrial Revolution
- a few mere centuries - when factory shifts began with a
whistle calling workers to their tasks.  That's when
'natural' time went away and our modern concept of time
came to exist.  Today, we are members of a community with
regulations and rules, and one of those is that time's
measure is specific and globally agreed upon.  We forget
sometimes that it hasn't always been this way.

Time was basic in our days as hunter-gatherers, and even
into the early days of agriculture.  There were days,
nights, and seasons. Religion and settled communities made
things more complicated because humans needed to keep track
of holidays and other agreed upon events, so the calendar
was born: weeks and months and years. At that point, we had
become rigorous about measuring and quantifying time.  Fast
forward to today, when time's measure is agreed upon world-
wide.  Now, you can have an atomic clock that is set by
satellite relay, and tells you what time it is exactly!

I rarely wear a watch.  I only have a couple of clocks in
my house: the alarm clock and one in the great room. But I
can read the time on my cell phone and it's before me on
the dashboard when I'm in the car.  Even if I've managed
somehow to go several hours without seeing a clock, I can
usually tell you within half an hour what time it is at any
given point in the day. Overcast or sunshine, the habit of
chunking up the day occurs internally, whether it's
necessary to track the time or not. Like when I am in the
garden with no appointments to keep, and I've been at a
project for a long stretch.  I have no place else I'm
required to be, yet I'm aware that I've been gardening for
about three hours.

Anyway, what is time?  In paraphrase of St. Augustine, "I
know what time is until I have to explain it."  There is
philosophic time and scientific time, and neither of these
are practical.  We live on the basis of perceived time.
You've heard the saying, "Time flies when you're having
fun."  It is true, and it's because our experience of time
is fluid: how your time passes depends on what you're doing
at the moment.  Notice this, and then make the most of it
because there is objective time and perceived time~ Your
experience of your life is based in perceived time.  Make
each moment the highest possible quality because only in
the moment of NOW can you feel fulfillment and joy.

"Your personal time exists only for you and for as long as
you live.  No one will ever be more responsible than you
are for the quality of your time." - Servan-Schreiber.

Sarah T. Woolsey is a frequent contributor to <a
href="http://rcclock.com">RC Clock Newsletter</a> the best
on-line clock information resource. Sarah's archive of
articles is found at http://www.rcclock.com/

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