Like Clockwork
Sometimes, if you sit quietly enough, you can hear it. It's either the most dreaded sound in the world, or a comforting fixture which you could never live without.
They come in all kinds of forms -- watches, pocket watches, cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, Baby Ben, Big Ben, on the wall, on the mantelpiece, standing alone… Sometimes, they're even digital, on your computer desktop or mobile phone's screen.
They're always there, though.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
Counting down the seconds, counting down the minutes, every hour, every day, each month of any given year.
People can be superstitious about clocks. It's said that when someone dies, clocks sometimes stop at the time of that person's death.
Clocks can also be metaphorical -- the body clock, for example, tells you when to wake up, when to sleep and can even bring life into the world.
People live by their clocks. Daily routine demands it. Time for breakfast, time for school, time for work. Play time, break time, lunch and teatime. We are ruled by constraints placed upon us by the clock.
Time is counted with a clock; time is judged by the clock. As soon as we're born, we begin to age, because the clock keeps on ticking.
Clocks can be said to have faces. We anthropomorphise them in order to make them friendlier. There's nothing worse to many a student than the glaring evidence that fitting in more data in an exam might not be possible. Yet some employees seek solace in the beaming look that says, "it's alright -- nearly time to go home". But like humans, they can be slow or unreliable. Unlike humans, however, if they break, we can replace them, get them fixed or simply insert new batteries. Easy, right?
Many works of fiction have featured clocks. You might think it's because it's mundane, part of everyday life. Did you ever think of the imagery? Clocks in fiction can turn back time and rebel against the laws of physics. They can denote childhood, adolescence and adulthood. They can even indicate when a character is in their autumn years, midnight becoming a metaphor for death. Our characters can also race against the clock.
Sometimes, we treat time like a finite substance, because a clock has told us that this is so. Time never stops, never comes to an end, even if the clock tells us it should.
Perhaps we place too much emphasis on our clocks? Shouldn't they be only guides as opposed to an absolute rule? Is there really such a thing as being early or being late? Perhaps we should mourn for lost time that will be sorely missed when the clock changes in spring, or be glad when regain that time in Fall? Perhaps time, once infinite, truly has become finite solely because of our understanding, imposed by the clock.
Without the clock, is there any guarantee that our lives would be easier, freer? Or would we still hold to our understanding of time marching on and be paranoid because we don't know how much time has passed?
Just listen. In the silence, it's nearly always there --
Tick tock. Tick tock.
-- until that moment when our time is up.
Tick tock tick…