Timeless, or naught

03.28.26 | 42.9461 N, -76.4277W

There is something in the tick of a clock that the body understands before the mind does.

It’s like a mechanical heartbeat, steady and indifferent to the dark.

As a young girl, I would sleep at my grandmother's house when my parents were away. In my mother’s girlhood room, there was a crafted, wooden clock on the wall. An external beat - filling a quiet room, counting out the long, hollow hours of the night.

Years later, in the quaint town of Skaneateles, New York, I perused around an antique store thinking I was entering a room. Really, I walked through a portal. I wandered slowly, fingers grazing forgotten things, until somewhere in the quiet - a tick. I stood there, utterly transfixed.

My emotions welled, suppressed for years long. A feeling of loneliness fell upon me, I missed my dear grandma. I paused in that room, connected to the moment. Isn’t the most beautiful thing about a moment: realizing you are in it?

And then, beneath the warmth, a quiet fear. I realized with every tick, another moment passes by. I then felt this realization wash over me, and a soft anger followed. Directed inward I have not been truly present in my conscious years on this earth. Aren’t I moving too fast through a life that deserves to be moved through slowly?

I am not the first to feel this. The clock has haunted us for centuries - used as a tool, a motif, in literature, film, and art. The White Rabbit’s frantic “I’m late, I’m Late….” Hook’s only fear, the predator: time itself, Dali’s melting clock, time as not rigid, but warped … we keep returning to it because we have never quite made peace with it …

Many who have grappled with time, have reached a similar quiet conclusion - time transcends boundaries, the soul alike. That time is not a reminder of our finitude, nor of what we stand to lose. Instead it is a message, to feel not dis-ease, but ease.

I believe the most honest clock is the heartbeat. The rhythm beneath life, the collective pulse of humanity.

Is there not beauty in that definiteness? In the boundary that gives a thing its shape? This is what we share. This is the underlying similarity, tethering us all, echoing in the stories we tell, in the meals we eat, in the life we love. 

To me, the clock is a reminder to simply be. To be conscious, to be open to all that comes, to be a life. I do not know why life is - but still, I feel calm. I feel it: the sense of connectedness, beyond my heartbeat, beyond my time.

I do not know, yet I live in my presence. I call my grandma, and tell those who I love that I love them. Ultimately I leave my stain upon the world, one of light, of positivity, of joy. My spirit is timeless, or it is not. That is okay. My life, as definite, as beautiful, is ticking. And all I can do, is live.