reimagine time boxes
The end of the year has me thinking about time scales. Everyone and their grandmother acknowledges the turn of the year as a big New Year's Eve ceremony. It's become a staple of the holiday season whether one participates in it, finds a different way to celebrate, or avoids it altogether.
What about all the other time scales we inhabit and turn over? Take larger time scales like decades, centuries, and even millennia. It's difficult to tell what the next decade will bring. How many of us will see the next century unfold? That question makes the next millennium seem that much further away from us.
Take smaller time scales: months, weeks, and days. Take time scales we turn over through our intraday motions: hours, minutes, and seconds. How much thought gets put into ceremonializing these smaller scales compared to years as a whole?
Yet, the prevailing commonality and order of time, as is commonly known, can give way to other preferences of ours for better or worse. Rigidity affords flexibility. Witness all the individualized and idiosyncratic time scales we create for ourselves. Life is infinite temporal boxes we operate within and throughout.
How many people view time scales as cages to belabor within until a job is done? How can time scales be treated as malleable, meanderable spaces instead? You can experiment with your desires before waiting for the current scale to turn. You can smush your activities such that it doesn't stretch the entire scale. You can look at present life differently based on how far forward or backwards you look.
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