Time is a funny thing. The old Greek already made the difference between clock-time (chronos) and experienced time (kairos). Those two don’t always fit together.
We all know the clock time. Often our life is ruled by it. Last weekend the daylight-saving-time (summertime) ended, we put the clock one hour back. It’s a simple action, but the effect on the experienced time takes a bit longer. It’s a bit like a jet-lag. For a jet-lag they say, that you need a day to recover, per one hour time difference. So it would take one day to recover from putting the clock back for an hour last weekend. Why do I still feel a bit disrupted than?
Clock-time feels like enforced on me from the outside. It feels like I have to adjust to a scheme that is not really mine. When it comes in handy in making appointments, it’s often disruptive when being creative. Fashion, hits, in’s and out’s, design often are related to clock-time, they feel like being enforced from the outside, as something you have to adapt to in order to fit in with peers, society etc.
Only when in flow – at work, reading, writing, walking in the woods, talking to a friend – I really can feel timeless. That is when I suddenly look at my watch to discover that hours have passed like minutes. Nowhere the difference between the two different kind of time is more clear to me than at those moments.
Timeless is also associated with some great pieces of art, film, music, paintings. Isn’t this what we all secretly want to produce, a timeless piece of art that is just as impressive in 50 years than it is now? I’m quite convinced that all timeless art was created in a flow, when the artist had no notice of time, in timeless moments. It might be good to put the clock away a bit more often in order to experience more timeless moments.