Time is Relative

by Sarah Van Arsdale

When it was time to turn the clocks ahead this past spring, I was once again happy that I'm not a person who has to buy every new gadget that comes down the electronic turnpike. It's hard enough losing an hour's sleep, but at least all I had to do was turn the little dial on the back of my alarm clock, and I was done.

Unlike some people I know. My mother, for example. When I visited her about a month after the time change, I saw that three of her clocks were still on the old time, one was keeping time to an altogether different drummer, and one just insistently flashed "12:00" over and over.

I did what I could to help her change them, but my talent doesn't really lie in the area of modern technology. The clock in her car, for example, remains about an hour and twenty minutes off, and remains a mystery to me.

As does time itself. There are of course the perennial questions, such as why does time seem to move more slowly when you're doing something unpleasant, and yet it races by when you're having lunch with your best friend or choosing new fabric for living room curtains? I noticed recently just how differently time moves for the young and the not-so-young. I was talking with my sister, and telling her that when her daughter is out of high school, she can do whatever she wants. Move to New York, for example.

"By then, I'll be in my fifties," she said. Then she paused. "Wait a minute - am I in my fifties now?"

"No," I lied.

"Anyway," I said, turning to my niece, who is 16, "You only have two years left of high school, right?"

She gave me a withering teenager look that was wordless and can only be translated as "What do you mean, only two years? Two years is roughly equivalent to the amount of time it took for the glaciers to sweep all of North America."

Of course Rachel can't be in her fifties, because that would mean I'm - Well, don't even go there, as my niece would say.

One little trick I've developed recently is to try to concentrate on time and appreciate it when I do have it. How long is a minute, for example? If you set a timer, or even just watch the second hand tick by, you'll see that a minute actually takes a very long time. What if, every day, you looked at just one beautiful thing for one solid minute? It could be an orange on a blue plate, a vaseful of flowers, a gorgeously appointed store window. I guarantee you it will make you feel as if time has stopped.

And as for the breakneck pace, I suggest getting as far away from a large metropolitan area as you possibly can. In New York, the clerk at the supermarket can't wait for you to dig out exact change, even if there is no one in line behind you. She's got more important things to do, like click her ultra-long fingernails together or look at her watch.

Of course, everyone is in a big hurry in the city because there is something to do and someplace to go. Travel to a small town in New England, and the other grocery patrons are happy to relinquish their place in line to you because, after all, it isn't like they're trying to make a concert at Carnegie Hall that night.

Sometimes the hustle and rush of the city is almost unbearably exciting, like the evening I came home at 7 p.m., tired and discouraged and just wanting a little dinner, and there were three messages from a friend saying she had been given two expensive tickets to the opera at the Met for that night at eight - could I go with her? I called her and she hadn't left yet, so I ate a couple of crackers, jumped into my backless black velvet dress, and flew out the door, putting on my earrings as I hailed a taxi.

Even if Rachel is 50 and her daughter is now what was once called "a young lady," even if the biannual time change exhausts me, at least I'm still young enough to manage a 60-second dash to the opera, and at least I still have my wits about me to really be able to savor every moment of walking up the red-carpeted stairs to the first row of the balcony.

Reprinted with permission from the Sheffield School of Design