The symbol for Ayn Rand’s life was a cigarette (one of attitude). The symbol for her characters was a dollar sign (one of value). I’ve decided the symbol for my life is a clock (one of clarity). What we have that we spend even by doing nothing is time. Ours, the world’s – time.
Time is a creature, in Orthodox thinking – a created thing. It will one day be taken up into God, like all creatures, and not allowed to cease to exist, because God let’s nothing he has created fall out of his hands. Where would it go? There is nothing but God and that which God has made, since he made all things. There will always be time, but there is only so much time for certain things. Only so much time to write that book, build that business, shape that market, etc. In time, we all move and breathe and have our existence, just as time moves within God. In fact, you could say that time is actually movement itself.
The most effective periods of my life occurred when I took time seriously. I look at the clock, and that is the context in which I live. After a certain amount of time, I’ll be too tired to continue without rest, so that time will be committed as well. When I get up, other things will demand more of my time, and I’ll trade the one thing for the other, because each is attached to time – each is measured in time.
I agree with Rand that money is a measure of value. But time is what we actually spend, what actually purchases things for us. With time, we purchase the kind of life we’re going to lead – today, from now, and for tomorrow. Once you know who you are and what you’re built to do, it’s you versus the clock. It’s an arena into which you step, and time is the opponent.
Recently I read “Do the Work” and just love that book. Resistance is the opponent. Yes. But time is its ally. Time is our ally too. Time stands between us with our work and resistance. Time works for us, sometimes. Time stepping back from a problem. Time to let it settle. Time to imagine, to think, to relax. But time is also a wrestling opponent. We don’t wrest moments from it – rather, it inflicts moments relentlessly upon us. There’s no getting the clock to stop or speed up. It is the constant – the heartbeat of history – the pulse of the world. It is steady. It is unwavering. We wrestle with it to understand it, not defeat it.
As I look at the clock and look at my work, and what I want to accomplish, I realize that I’ll spend every day with some measure of time. From now on, all my life, the clock will be my constant companion. Some people decry this as unromantic. They say “take a chill pill and relax”. But those are the voices of people who never do anything. Their lives end not knowing what they were for, and wishing for more time. They bow to the clock in the end, or shrug it off, because they never knew what it meant – they couldn’t really read its code.
The belief that time somehow inflicts upon us an undesirable mental state, an oppressed consciousness, comes from seeing time as the enemy, the overbearing tyrant, the slave driver – “the old bald cheater”. But the slave in that is slave to his own abandonment of time as companion through life. Time is like a lover to be pleased, not a master to be served. The people dismissing the importance of time aren’t accomplishing anything – they’re not having “sex” so to speak – they’re just staying out all night trying to figure out why it exists.
For me, the symbol of my goals, my challenge, my method, my purpose, my meaning, is the clock. Nothing more to say than that, right now. That’s enough. The clock speaks for itself.