The Thing We Pretend To Understand
#32 - Time and it's subtlety
This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. Each of us examined the concept of ‘TIME’ through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 400 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.
How do you check the time?
Do you still use a wristwatch, or do you reach for your phone instead? Are you sure the time is accurate, in sync with what society believes in? Are we all, then, governed by time?
Have you noticed that when you are enjoying yourself, time seems to move faster? And when you are consumed by sorrow, it drags on. We feel it stretch and shrink, though the clock ticks on. Time is not fixed. It bends to how we live.
They say time moves slowly in villages and rushes in cities. Does that mean cities are filled with more 'happy' things? Or does the pace of life shape our sense of time? We carve it up into hours and days, but its flow is never even. It is not universal. It is personal, moving with us.
Different cultures see time in different ways. In some places, time is like a circle. Seasons come back, life repeats. Farmers plant with the rain and harvest with the sun, following nature's rhythm.
In many Western countries, time is a straight line. People rush to meet deadlines, fill calendars, and push for progress. In Spain, afternoons slow down for a siesta. In Italy, people take their time and enjoy each moment.
Some tribes in the Amazon have no word for time at all. They live by the sun and the river, not by clocks. If time is not the same everywhere, then what is it? A rule we follow or just a habit we never question?
If time is subjective, can we ever measure it, or are our clocks just guesses? Is time an agreement we make to bring order, or does it move at its own pace? We try to box it with schedules and alarms, yet it flows on, untouched.
We say time is money. We trade hours for money, count days in pay, and measure entire lives by profit margins. But does money freeze time? Does it slow it, stretch it, let you hold it? We hoard it, spend it, save it, as if it were something real. But time goes on, indifferent to the deal.
But what is time, really? If time is not the same everywhere, is it real? Or just a story we tell ourselves?
Giddy up!
Avinash.
You can explore other posts on TIME from the Bangalore Substack Writers group following the links below. Give it a read.
“So… When will shit actually hit the fan?” by Sailee, sunny climate stormy climate
Time: I Just Want to See It, Watch It Move by Abhishek Singh, The Comic Dreamer
Timekeepers - Retracing the Universe’s Deep-Time Signatures by Devayani Khare, Geosophy
Keeping Time by Reshma Apte, Fanciful Senorita
Locating Myself In The Map of Time by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home For Homeless Thoughts
The lost intimacy with time by Siddharth Batra, Siddharth’s substack
Lessons Time Taught Me by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer
A Time for Worship by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt
“Tata Mummy Tata” by Rakhi Anil, Rakhi’s Substack
The vicious cycle of sixteen - A dancer’s take on keeping time by Eshna Benegal, The Deep Cut
How long is twenty years? by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think
How mystery writers play with the clock by Gowri N Kishore, About Murder, She Wrote
TIME INFLATED, JUSTICE DEFLATED. by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain
What keeps the fool in me delighted by Rahul Singh, Mehfil
The endless ebb and flow of Time by Siddarth RG, Siddarth’s Newsletter
Time, please! by Shaili Desai - Litcurry
Great read man. I'm going through all the posts from the cohort you guys had, and it's so cool to see different perspectives over time. Someone sharing thoughts on time in the scale of eons while someone else sharing their experience with a sense of time, from the perspective of their tiny corner of life.
So true, this struggle between the line we’ve been fed about time being money, but also so true that time is TIME! We may track it in hours and minutes or seasons but there are only so many of them (whichever metric you go by) that every person is entitled to in his or her lifetime…we don’t know that number, and so we should value it, no matter how we measure it!