Clocks

It's quite appropriate that I elaborate on clocks today given that we're all living one hour earlier for the first time in a few months (excluding recent foreign travel to Zimbabwe...). However, something in this dictionary definition really resonates with me:

"Clocks: a mechanical or electrical device for measuring time, indicating hours, minutes, and sometimes seconds, typically by hands on a round dial or by displayed figures."

We're all obsessed by how long things take and especially at university, regular conversations would occur something along the lines of:

"This term has been so short, it's just whizzed by...",  contrasted with someone (usually me) stating, "No, I think it's been super slow, think how much we've done.." 

How can we perceive time in such different ways?

My tenuous analogy considers how we're a little like clocks, always measuring time, indicating the hours, minutes and sometimes seconds that pass, and obsessing about how short the week has been, or how long our afternoons are.

How about we try and just live?

As November approaches, I'm very aware that I'm two months into my internship. That's one fifth done, four fifths to go. And where has the time gone? Initial reflection was slightly negative as some elements still feel new and I'm frustrated that I'm not completely comfortable here. Yet, on deeper reflection it became apparent how relationships are growing. How this house is home. How London itself is becoming less of a mystery as I become expert on tube lines and how long it'll take to get to the office. It's not a beginning but a progression, from now on. 

Yet my obsession with time periods has caused me to reflect; it's better for me to focus on each day and how life progresses.

Coldplay put it nicely in their aptly named song:

"...curse missed opportunities, am I
A part of the cure, or am I part of the disease?"

Perhaps we get so carried away with time that we miss what's going on around us. Perhaps we should stop worrying about how fast or slow life goes and embrace each moment. Something I need to remember as I live in London. 

And of course this combines with an understanding of God that I really value as a Christian: 

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3:11

God is the ultimate clock; his timing is perfect.