265 Days to Go ~ The Clocks Around Us

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. That's how the clocks used to sound when I was a child. They measured out the beat of the day. On the hour, each and every hour, even throughout the night, they'd chime the time dismissing the passing hour and welcoming the new. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Bong. Bong. Bong.

We knew when to wake, when to go the school, when to return, when to eat supper and when to go to bed by the chiming of the clocks around us. It was not a noisy, annoying sound, but a familiar, constant sound.

Nowadays, we have technology that brings us the silence of digital watches. Even my wristwatch, which is not digital, is quiet. Its mechanisms are muted as if by magic. The digital clocks brightly glare at us from across the rooms and through the nights on our Super 5000 Go-Underwater sport watches. We all look to tell the time.

I liked it better when we listened to tell the time. I wish for those simpler days for other reasons as well.

Back then we had schedules to follow. We knew where to be and when.

Now, in contrast, we have schedules to follow. Many, many schedules to follow. We overbook and overlook events on a regular basis. We do not always know where to be and when. On top of  that, we have the demands that others place on us in daily life: school, work, motherhood, fatherhood, church duties, community duties, kids activities, social activities... and... and... 

We are tripping all over ourselves and our kids and our neighbors, not to mention the toys on the steps leading to the front door and the pile of clean laundry growing off the sofa and onto the living room floor. Our hands, of course, are filled with books and papers just carried in from the car and no matter how hard we try to kick the clean clothes aside, the more entangled our legs become and our balance is thrown off. Our children busting out in laughter at the whole debacle.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Slow that all down. Schedule less. Clear the room. Try out the sofa. Read a book. In all the things you have to do in the day, do you fit into the schedule too? 

Does your day fly by you as your schedules do, as the digital clock does, silently marking the minutes of your life in past tense? The clocks around us know the tally, but we seem to rarely notice they're counting. After all, we are in charge ~ not the clocks.

Right.