
ON CLOCK-TIME: An Un-Seeing Exercise
We humans may be the only animals on this planet that are aware of time. In fact, humans are more than a little freaky about time. We have been fascinated and even obsessed with it for a good long while now.
There’s archaeological evidence that the Babylonians and Egyptians began to measure time about 5,000 years ago. That development in human thought-constructing was probably built on a long, long line of other previously thunk thoughts and concepts.
Trying to separate out the thought concepts that resulted when humans ruminated and pondered about clock-time from the rest of our alternative perceptions of time was interesting.
TURNING THE POET LOOSE
I finally hit on the idea of checking out the idioms we’ve developed about time.
It occurred to me that idioms are actually mini-poems. They are like clichés – once-clever little groupings of words that are now widely used because a lot of people have already used them to communicate larger ideas than the literal meanings of the actual individual words.
Every idiom, like every cliché, has a backstory. They are all established by common usage. A lot of people liked them and passed them around among themselves and the accumulated meanings and nuances of these phrases grew.
Every language has time idioms. Check it out yourself, if you like. There are a lot of them around, embedded in our everyday languages.

A TIMELY STORY
I’m going to tell you a fairy tale sprinkled with a bunch of time idioms that are related to how we postmodern industrial sorts perceive time. (It is, like all of my fictions and illusions, based on a true story.)
Once upon a time, nobody actually measured time. Things happened, of course, but like every other animal in the world, humans lived in an “eternal now.”
- no spare time or free time or down time
- no short or long or limited time
- no time to bide
- no time to do or serve or pass
- no time to keep or give or take
- no time to lose or to lose track of
- no time to find
- no time to manage or master
- no time to waste or squander
- no time to borrow
- no time to make or to make up
- no time to spend or save or invest
- no time to kill
- no time to race against
- no time to arrive in the nick of
- no time to be on or off or out of
- no time to get ahead or behind of
The amorphous time our ancestors lived back when we were feral creatures with a lot fewer words was not the “time is of the essence” variety that came along later.
Time had not yet become an intrinsic and necessary factor in the completion of some cooperative or group project or trade agreement. Time had not yet become equated with money.
Instead, the time our ancestors lived could be described as “time at large.” Things did need to get done, but the sense of urgency and of important, unmet deadlines were often missing.

WELL, LOOK AT THAT!
Did you notice?
All of the story that I’ve told so far is laden with an inordinate number of time idioms. I’m telling this tale in just one language, but the number of different time idioms I’ve used in the telling of it just scratches the surface.
Humans, as I’ve said, are fascinated by time and the words we use to talk about it reflects our preoccupation with it.
As innately orderly creatures, we have an inborn need to catalog, categorize, and describe everything around us. It’s how we make sense of the world, so it isn’t surprising that our ancestors began to notice time passing. Our ancestors could watch “time go by,” as they figured out how to track the movements of the sun, the moon and the seasons.
As hunter-gatherers and then as farmers and members of larger and larger groups and communities, our ancestors became aware of how time could get “full” with all kinds of doings and activities.
Rascals, scammers and rapscallions could “two-time” anyone or anything, and everybody could use time to heal all wounds. Humans were able to have “the time of their lives” or they might have “a hell of a time.” There were happy times and there were sad times.
There were also high or low, hard or soft, and good or bad times to be had by all. Some of these most excellent folks even had a “whale of a time” or they “hit the big time.”
The accumulation of “years,” “months” and “days” that we called “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow” got broken down further into “hours” and “minutes” and “seconds” and ever-smaller bits as people developed the ways and means to actually measure all those bits and pieces of time.

MEASURING TIME HAVE KEPT THE MAKERS BUSY THROUGH THE AGES
Time has fascinated humans ever since it made its appearance on the world-stage. (Nobody really knows who “invented” the concept of time, but we humans have certainly been intrigued by the idea since whenever it began.)
Ingenious human makers have been slicing, dicing and measuring time for ages now. They produced all kinds of ingenious devices to “tell time” using the natural phenomena around them. These phenomena included these kinds of things:
- the shadows cast by the sun shining on a stick (or a ginormous rock column) stuck in the ground,
- the movements of dripping water or sliding sand channeled by enveloping metal, pottery or glass containments,
- the burn rates of candles,
- the movements of weights and pendulums,
- the interplay of balance springs and assorted meshing gear arrangements,
- the shock of an electrical charge running through a quartz crystal, and
- the vibrations of a particular sort of atom.
The measuring devices the makers made got smaller and more portable. The makers were able to achieve an ever greater precision in doing what they did.
This video, “TimeLine,” is a “brief introduction to the history of timekeeping devices.” It was uploaded in 2013 by SpotImageryLtd.
CLOCK TIME AND PRODUCTIVITY TAKE OVER
Even more eye-opening is a second YouTube video, What Life Was Like In the Industrial Revolution, a 2022 episode in the Patreon-funded vlog, The Intrigued Mind. It details what many ordinary folks experienced during that world-changing epoch when the human fascination with time became an obsession with something called “productivity” and producing desirable results.
All kinds of Smarty Pants through the years expanded on and used the building blocks of the Revolution’s time-measuring systems, processes and technologies. Clever dudes and dudettes figured out how we regular sorts (and our overseers) could actually “use time wisely” and egg each other on to keep on doing more and more and more.
The thought-construct of “productivity” was born and grew and grew during the Industrial Revolution when we humans got carried away with the “time-is-money” thing.
Basically, industrial-type economic productivity is measured by figuring out how people, businesses and countries can use the least amount of resources available (time, money, energy, manpower, space, materials, and so on and so forth) to produce and deliver the most goods and services to our customers and consumers for the least cost.
It became the chief metric for measuring the “healthiness” of a going concern.
The metrics used were also not so good for the planet either.
Improved productivity with all of its attendant benefits and costs flowed into our collective consciousness as well. We started assessing and weighing up our own personal doings with these very same standards and systems of measurement.
FURTHER MUSINGS
One result of all of this relentless industrial-strength mind-work is that many regular folks nowadays say they feel like they are drowning in a flood of a constantly churning chaos of change.
(It might be worth noting that this kind of a reaction does tend to happen when one tiny mind takes on the task of trying to understand and encompass any of the big Mysteries presented by Life-Its-Own-Self. It has happened time and time again.)
The story still continues onward. All of us humans keep on making it up as we go along. That too, it seems, is what we humans do.
TIME THOUGHTS
Time.
It all takes time.
When the dance is slow, is stately,
The dancers move to subtle rhythms
Tied to the heart and no one can say
When the dance will end.
Time is NOT of the essence.
Time IS the essence.
Movement following the Tai Ch’i,
A turtle swims through the mother sea,
Crossing the void slowly,
Not turning from its course.
On its back, it carries the world.
Time.
[by Netta Kanoho]
Header photo credit: “The Watchmakers Amanuensis” by Jussi via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]
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12 thoughts on “ON CLOCK-TIME: An Un-Seeing Exercise”
Thanks for your post on “Time”.
I believe people constructed the idea of “time” because they decided we needed a purpose in life. These people knew that our time on earth was finite. So, our society constructed a time frame in which to accomplish things.
What doesn’t make sense to me are the things society has come up with in terms of what we should be doing with our time. For instance, women should be married and have kids by the time they are in their mid to late 20s. Right after college (age 21 or 22), people should go to grad school and then start their life career…. become partner at a firm by the time they’re in the 40s… and on and on.
I construct my own time frame.
Thank you for this interesting article.
Shalisha, thanks for the visit and for sharing your thoughts. I do agree with you and am glad you found the post interesting.
People are always going to “should” us and we’ve always got the choice to listen or not.
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Hello Netta, thank you for sharing this article about the essence of time.
Until I came to read this I had never thought in depth about time itself or about the many time idioms we use these days to describe the different aspects. Your article has, indeed, changed how I think about time and its passing.
Best wishes, Jenni.
Thanks for the visit, Jenni. I’m glad the post got you thinking about time….
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This is an interesting and fascinating read.
Reading your poem reminded me of Biblical scripture. In particular Ecclesiastes 3. “A Time for Everything, and a reason for every activity under the heavens” Ecc. 3:1
Of course, this was written in the 9th century B.C and time had been recorded and watched closely for a long time. Our concept of time, and intrinsic business, has left us, I believe poorer than our ancestors who did not know time.
We are trapped, to a degree, in our time centered world. And for many of us, this has led to a decline in our health, wellbeing and happiness.
How can we recapture our timeless world? Thanks for sharing.
Dale, thanks for your visit and for sharing your thoughts. I do agree with you. We humans need to figure out how to transcend the time constructs we’ve erected. They are driving us mad, I think.
Pondering on this, I am noticing, also has the same effect. Hee!
We go on….
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Wow, what a thought-provoking and insightful blog post! The author beautifully captures the human fascination with time and our evolving perception of it throughout history. It’s intriguing to consider how idioms, like mini-poems, have developed around the concept of time, reflecting our preoccupation with it.
I couldn’t help but ponder the transition from a time-less existence to one where time became an integral part of our lives, especially as societies grew and evolved. The author’s exploration of how time became associated with urgency, deadlines, and even money highlights the profound impact it has had on our collective consciousness.
Personally, I find it fascinating how our obsession with productivity and measuring time has shaped not only our work lives but also our personal lives. The Industrial Revolution marked a pivotal moment when “time-is-money” became deeply ingrained in our thinking. However, as the post suggests, this metric for measuring success often overlooks the humaneness and the impact on the planet.
The overwhelming flood of constant change and the feeling of being caught in a whirlwind of chaos resonates deeply with me. In this fast-paced world, it’s easy to lose sight of the present moment and become consumed by the pressures of time. Yet, as the author implies, perhaps it’s in our nature as humans to navigate the mysteries of life and make it up as we go along.
The poem at the end beautifully encapsulates the essence of time, emphasizing its significance and the interplay between movement, rhythm, and the unfolding of existence. It reminds me to cherish each moment and embrace the dance of life, knowing that time is not merely an external constraint but an integral part of our being.
Cheers
M.T. Wolf
Thanks for the visit and for sharing your thoughts so well, Mike.
Myself, I am thinking that the major mistake many of us made when we got immersed in the Industrial Revolution thing was allowing ourselves to get brainwashed into attempting to build our whole lives around our work and societal imperatives. Turning yourself into a rampaging workaholic does not a good life make.
I’m trying to figure out how to step back from that. Maybe I have to go listen to some grass growing or something.
Please do come again….
I’ve been finding myself thinking differently about time and urgency in recent months.
Since I’ve always been the overstressed type, there has always been a sense of urgency tugging at me. I’m also the type who can’t involve himself in just one project, so I’ve tended to measure everything in terms of the time it would (or should) take.
You mentioned that some people have suggested that we created time just by attempting to measure it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, but it certainly has become more important as we’ve tried harder to get a handle on it.
My goal for myself is to make it work better for me than ever before, rather than feeling like its dictating every aspect of my life. To put it another way, mastering time, rather than being its slave.
Thanks for sharing! This has certainly given me pause for thought.
Mark
Mark, I’m glad the post has been helpful to you. I appreciate your visit and the thoughts you’ve shared as well.
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What a great read! I really enjoy your posts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on how the concept of time has evolved. I often am caught up in the never-ending quest to improve my productivity, but there is only so much that can be accomplished in one day.
Your post serves as a powerful reminder, though, that we are not the first humans to encounter this issue, and your reminder on how people experienced the same challenge during the Industrial Revolution is powerful.
I am also struck by the fact that I don’t really think about this much, and your post is an important reminder to reflect and ensure that we are not running ourselves ragged.
I look forward to reading more from you soon! Thanks again.
Thank you for the visit and for your kind words, Laura. I do appreciate them.
Please do come again.