Outside The Box

Every year about this time, leaves gather and get relocated; then they regroup and conspire to come back with others, only to be relocated again. The roofs of our house and barn are inspected and repaired as needed. Garden hoses are coiled and stored away. Tomato plants are pulled up and replaced by broccoli, lettuce, and collards. It’s time for the jackets and long-sleeve shirts to come out of storage. It’s time to wait for Windows to finish updating. It’s time for the annual fall-back messing with our schedules allowed by the do-nothings in Washington, which once again mandates disrupted sleep patterns, increased depression, strokes, car accidents, and heart issues.

What also happens about this time, year after year, is that someone reminds me that the earth has made yet another trip around the sun since the annual ritual was performed. You know the one I mean. I read recently a theory that the “happy birthday” ritual is a holdover from ancient dark rites. Think about it: You gather in a circle – around a circle of fire – and chant an incantation that binds you to time and death, with balloons.

How old would you be if you didn’t know? How old would you act? How old would you feel? I knew a woman who didn’t take much stock in birthdays. She had a heart operation when she was almost 90, and two weeks later, we saw her carrying an aluminum ladder across a field to climb into a tree and pick cherries. She’s still carrying ladders.

Bound to time, we are, as surely as the email birthday greeting from the bank and the real estate agent we talked to 10 years ago but didn’t buy anything, and the insurance company we ditched but somehow remained on their mailing list, just in case. How do they even know my birthday? It’s a conspiracy, I tell you.

Last year, I removed my date of birth from Facebook. This year, I didn’t half miss the tiny doses of serotonin delivered by the little red notification numbers indicating that someone I once knew, or who knows someone I once knew, thought enough of me to click on the birthday reminder Facebook provides, which automatically generates a greeting for our virtual friends. You don’t even have to type out that greeting anymore because who has the time? Now the people who do remember to bind me to time are on the small list of actual friends willing to sacrifice some of their own precious time to help speed me on my way to oblivion. God love them.

Mark my words, this cultural, institutional, international, civilizational, and personal hyper-awareness of time is making us age a lot faster than necessary. When teenagers have facelifts to celebrate graduation from high school, we should know that something is amiss. It was bad enough in olden times when a home might have one wind-up clock, and watches were kept in pockets until they were needed. Now every pixelated device we have, which is most of our devices, reminds us constantly of the time and the date. The second hand is a tiny Balrog’s whip against our all-too-fleeting bubbles of awareness.

It is impossible to escape time, but perhaps we can mitigate the damage. Personally, I prefer fewer clocks (and mirrors) in the house. I don’t wear a watch. I am bound to technology, but I endeavor to use it rather than be used by it. It only takes a moment to set reminders, which then ping and sing me on my way to appointments, and that’s so much nicer than constantly glancing at the clock.

I don’t number the years of our furred friends. Cats, in particular, will live forever if you forget how old they are. Did you notice that? “How old” is the crumbling cornerstone of civilization itself. I am convinced that you will add to your longevity by remembering that the only correct answer to the question, “How old are you?” is “I’m not.”

Here’s another pro tip from the best examples we have of time defiers: Busy people. Albert Einstein demonstrated that time, or the experience of time, slows down the faster an object moves. Keep moving, and The Reaper will have to sprint to catch up.

Get outside more, into the elements that create life force and away from those that drain it. Get to know the names of the moons, and learn to respond to their pull rather than that of the arbitrary calendar, which is so inaccurate that it has to be adjusted every four years. Accept the seasons that the earth presents rather than the anxiety of failed predictions peddled by meteorology and the calendar.

Forget about birthdays, but remember to acknowledge the people you care about without being reminded. If you are glad they were born, let them know today, right now. It’s about time.

Time, after all, is only God’s way of making sure that everything doesn’t happen at once.