Taking Time to Make Time
When the thirty three year old Michelangelo was painting the
Sistine Chapel ceiling, Pope Julius II would impatiently ask him when it would
be complete. The artist would reply “when I am satisfied". Rodin took 37
years to compete his Gates of Hell. The Taj Mahal took 22 years, two more that
the Great Pyramid at Giza. The Great Wall of China took 2000 years!
One could say that these were commissioned by the rich and
powerful, but then there are the living root bridges of Indonesia and North
East India made by villagers for their own use that can take at least 15 years
to complete.
The concept of time has changed very dramatically. Time was
once measured by the movement of the sun. Daytime was for activity, night for
rest. The sundial measured the hours of the day. Most people would just guess
the time of day by looking up at the sky.
Hourglasses, measured candles, water clocks were some of the devices
that measured time independently of the sun. Bells marked the eight daily
prayer times of Bendictine monks and gave the name to clocks from the Latin
word for bells – clocca. The mechanical clock made natural time completely irrelevant.
People started carrying time on their wrists, charging their services by the hour,
using alarm clocks, and travel schedules.
The clock itself was divided into hours. We still maintain
the Babylonian system of twelve and its multiples. They counted the divisions
of the four fingers with their thumbs arriving at twelve and its multiple,
sixty.
The quartz-crystal clock invented in 1928 by W. A. Marrison,
changed yet again how time was measured. Quartz crystals can vibrate at
millions of times a second allowing time to be measured up to a millionth of a
second. Races at the Olympics can be won by one millisecond.
This ability to manage time, gave birth to the desire for
speed. Until recently when Covid slowed
things down, speed was the measure of success. Cars are marketed for the speeds
they can reach and how quickly. We
design faster air travel, bullet trains, speed boats. Employees are stressed
with the need to meet deadlines. Multiple Choice Question examinations judge
ability by the speed of processing answers. We are told of the wonderful rush
of adrenaline when we ‘floor the pedal’ in our daily tasks, our exercises, our
educational growth.
Daniel Kahneman in his bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow,
emphasizes the need for both fast thinking -often automatic actions, such as
judging distances when driving, and slow thinking- deliberation to thoroughly
examine a matter, to understand all possibilities, before coming to any
conclusion. It may be as simple as parking a car in a tight space or making a
decision about a business strategy. Thinking fast means the mind will turn to
prior solutions. Thinking slow allows new ideas to emerge.
There is a general perception that slowing down is wasting
time or indicates laziness, while science suggests it is an important way to
replenish the mind and generate new ideas. It is possibly more productive than
communicating at the rate of 1,000,000,000 bits a second on one’s digital
device.
Art, even when a work is made at great speed as Sadequain
and Picasso did, evolves out of a painstaking process of practice and formation
of ideas. Art and photography can, quite literally, stop time by capturing a
moment. We are fascinated by slow motion images as they allow us to see the
details we would otherwise miss.
Here lies the value of slowing down - to notice, observe,
process, evolve our responses, whether we are paying attention to our children,
our friends and life partners, or conducting market research, writing a
journalistic report or planning a strategy for peace. We save time by making
time. The Swiss saying goes “No shortcuts today, I am in a hurry”.
Durriya Kazi
August 28, 2021
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