February 10th(ish)

I guess it goes to follow that my post on time, started quite some "time" ago is my return to my words of my immigration experience. Although this I guess is less about immigration and more about the freedom retirement brings....

I’m not entirely sure of the date. I know it’s Sunday, mostly because I’m pinning my hopes on making progress toward home tomorrow, and "tomorrow" feels like it must be a Monday.

For the first few days of this journey, my watch was a permanent fixture on my wrist. Now, it sits unused on a nightstand in whatever room we happen to be occupying. I still set it on the charger every couple of days, a lingering habit of "just in case," but the desire to strap it back on is fading. I’m beginning to realize that time, as we’ve built it, is a deterrent to living rather than a benefit to it.

The Invention of the Restriction

We treat the ticking of a clock as a fundamental law of the universe, but it is a man-made construct. It was designed to restrict, not to free.

Before the world was chopped into minutes and seconds, the passing of life was measured by events, not increments.

• The Sun: When it was up, we worked because we could see.

• The Shadows: When the light faded, the predators emerged. It wasn’t "3:00 AM"; it was simply the time to hunker down, stay quiet, and sleep.

• The Seasons: The world woke in the spring to plant new life, and we followed that lead. We harvested when the tilt of the earth turned the leaves to gold.

Life was a dialogue with nature. We listened, and we responded.

Control vs. Connection

As I lull into this timeless existence, I can’t help but notice the connection between the "modern" obsession with time and the darker structures of our society. We live in a world where systems of supremacy, specifically the rigid, Western European models of productivity, still rear their heads.

There is a fundamental difference in philosophy here:

• Traditional Cultures: Understood the world as a force to be respected. They held the knowledge to survive with the land, recognizing that humans are participants in an ecosystem.

• The Western Model: Seeks to fight and control the world.

Rather than letting the events of nature dictate the flow of life, we decided to conquer them. We created artificial lights so we could force labor into the night. We created guns to eliminate "pesky" predators rather than learning to coexist with the wild. We turned the harvest into a commodity and the day into a shift.

The Sovereignty of the Nightstand

Leaving my watch on the charger is a small act of rebellion, but it feels significant. When you stop looking at the dial, you start looking at the sky. You start listening to your body’s hunger instead of the lunch bell.

The "civilized" world calls this being lost or lazy. But in the quiet of this Sunday, I feel more found than ever. Maybe the "primitive" cultures weren't lacking the technology to track time; maybe they were just wise enough to know that you can't capture a life in a circle of ticking gears.

If we want to dismantle the systems that restrict us, perhaps we should start by reclaiming our days from the clocks that tell us we’re running out of them.