Time: A Story

Fiction | Moose

Moose here. 

I'm still in work mode from the most recent podcast on the police. Such a deep topic, and it was hard to cover as much as we did. I'm proud of us. What an achievement. Have a listen to it! I would really suggest it to you. 

Anyway, I'm a fan of writing - well, we all are really, I don't know why I'm trying to make myself sound so special! I thought I'd share this piece with you. It was just something I wrote on the train from work last week, and it came from something very inherent that I see in all people, but most significantly, myself. Ever since writing this, I have definitely changed my attitude to the way that I perceive Time. Namely, I think it is important that we start to do the things that we desire, when we want to do them, when the heart craves it. But I shan't keep you guessing any longer. Have a read, and let me know what you think. 

Time.

Is Time not the most limiting creation of human existence, handcuffing us, holding our souls hostage from that innate connection we have with nature?

Each morning we are woken by an alarm at a certain Time to enable us to arrive at work when we should – when our contract stipulates. We know the Time that we need to leave, to reach the bus in Time for the train that will ensure your punctuality. So we rush around early in the morning, having desperately fought the snooze for five more minute of precious sleep, and quickly shower, eat our breakfast, get dressed, find our misplaced keys, before heading out of the door.

We try to remain calm, but the brain, the mind, is stressed. We have to make that train.

You rush to get the bus stop, as the app on our phones informs us of the bus’ arrival in two minutes, and, despite that being enough Time for a gentle walk, you pick up your pace, a jog even, so as to ensure that your bus drives you to your station, which takes you to your work.

Your bus reaches its destination, and you peer at your phone. According to the train Timetable, the train is arriving in eight minutes, plenty of Time for a gentle walk to the station, which takes five minutes. So you calm, you act casually. “I can relax.”

You arrive in plenty of Time and immediately grab the free newspaper before standing close to the spot where the door to your desired carriage will come to rest. But the train arrives late. You stare at your watch and curse the luck that you continue to have – this is the second Time the train is late this week! Although you look calm, and your face maintains that sophisticated look that you dressed yourself in that morning, inside you feel a heat rising, almost out of embarrassment. And when you hear the call for the train, from the tannoy, and see it peering around the corner of the track in the distance, you whisper to yourself: ‘about fucking Time.’

“The next chapter of my book is only ten pages long, I’m sure I have enough Time to finish that on the journey,” so you take out your book and read. Others, we mindlessly scroll through our phones, texting, checking Facebook. Some sleep, with their heads tilted back at unholy angles, catching up on the sleep that they needed this morning.

Shortly after leaving the last station on the journey before your final destination, twenty minutes away, the train stops, an event that does not usually happen to this train, and “should not try and ruin my day!” You persist with the book, but the lack of movement for the train starts to affect you. You lose concentration on the book that has dominated your attention for the last few days, a book that you have not put down where possible. So you look outside the window and witness that your train is still not moving.

“But I have somewhere to be.”

You let out a tut, and look around. Yours is not the only annoyance that is audible, as people around show frustration at the journey.

A beep on the train’s tannoy. A faceless man speaking through the radio informs you that a train ahead is causing the delay. Everyone listens intently as the man speaks, before continuing back to their respective books, phones, slumbers. You return to your book, though with a secret hate towards this faceless man, despite your knowledge that he is not to fault for the late running of your train.

Eventually the train arrives at its destination, only minutes late, yet you rush to the tube, thanking your luck that it arrives on Time, before rushing the final two minute walk to work, with perceptible power as though you are battling for a gold medal at the Olympics, making it to work just on Time.

You sit at your desk at work, watching the clock all day. Meetings are in the diary. It is Time for lunch soon (and you eat despite not being particularly hungry). Half an hour before your day ends and you watch the hands of the clock slowly meet each minute one by one. And though Time had no concept whilst you sat quietly to finish your work before this moment, this last half hour becomes torture.

Five O’Clock and it is Time to end the day. You act as though you are being productive for an extra ten minutes before leaving, giving yourself enough Time to make your desired train.

It’s a thirty-minute walk or a packed tube that will take you twenty in a stuffy environment back to back with your peers. But you need to unwind. You need to walk, and decide to do so. You need to reset your mind. It is a quick walk to start the journey, and you weave in and out of the traffic of pedestrians and tourists in your way, as though competing against Lewis Hamilton in the Grand Prix.

Halfway on the journey you check your phone and see that you have plenty of Time, so you slow your pace down, still conscious of the amount of Time left before the train leaves. At Times, someone walks ahead of you, much slower than yourself, disrupting your rhythm, and you speed past them slightly annoyed by their passivity.

And finally you reach the station. Plenty of Time.

As you enter the station, you stop politely to let someone walk past, and, in tune with the politeness of the British citizen, they do the same to you. Someone bumps in to the back of you as you stop. They tut, angry that you have disrupted their rhythm, annoyed by your passivity, yet they apologise for having walked in to you as you apologise for stopping and causing the crash. And you realise, at that point, how bound this person is to Time – they are trying to make their train. And then you realise that you have shown this same trait all day. You are bound to Time, running a three-legged race with this invisible entity called Time, this very human creation that determines the way that you carry yourself throughout the day.

Yet despite this epiphany, you make your desired train – it is comfortable and you know where you like to sit – and you complete the same process as you do every evening: you laze about, tired, before seeing that you should head to bed, yet delaying it as much as you can, revolting against the boundaries set upon you by this abusive relationship with Time, even despite your need to get to sleep.

You complete this exact same process the next day, and the next, always conscious of the tick of the clock.

And it is as though we have become mechanical.

Ultimately, we have lost our connection with nature. We are bound to this invisible entity called Time.

Imagine a world where we sleep when we are tired. When we eat out of hunger. When we complete certain actions because we so desired to do so in that very moment. Is that not what our bodies are ultimately designed for? Are we not supposed to sleep when it gets dark, and eat when our stomachs rumble with desire?

When did we lose our affiliation with our very nature?

Why have we checked ourselves into this prison known as Time?

Why do we not try and escape and be free, following our hearts desires, and only when it desires?

Are we no longer humans?

Moose OUT!