What if we could put a bell on time?

Time crept by on little cat’s feet. You hardly noticed it was gone. When you have too much time you are bored, when you have too little time, you want more. Like most of what we get, we never really value it until it is gone or until someone else wants what we have. We hardly notice the passing of time, the ticking of clocks or the ringing of church bells. Time is a paradox, a riddle and a conundrum NOT rolled up into one but twisted and tangled together until we cannot tell what is the beginning, middle or end. We alternately exult time then shortly after we malign it. We define it, and then decide it does not really exist; but through it all, time remains omnipotent and omnipresent in our lives.

So how can time be so stealthy and so cat like? If we belled time (like belling the cat), would we be more aware of its influence and presence in or lives? What if we could hear it coming and hear it leaving? Would we be forever warned or would we quickly learn to ignore the sound of the bell? I suspect that we might still take it for granted. We never really value time until it is running out. We have the most precious resource in the world and we ignore it unless we suddenly realize we will not have much more of it. We all know someone who had a heart attack and suddenly started taking care of themselves or someone who smoked until they were diagnosed with cancer. As a nation, we have repeatedly delayed taking action when needed until the crisis was in our face. We can get a hurricane warning and until the winds are blowing the trees down, we stubbornly resist taking action. It seems we need a crisis to galvanize us into action. And what is more of a crisis then finding out that our time is shorter than we thought on this earth.

How aware are you of the time in your life, the changing of the minutes, the passing of the days, weeks, months, seasons or years in your life? Do you see them all passing by or do you only notice them when they are gone? What would it take to make you more aware of the time in your life, the time you spend and the time you waste? Do you need to put a bell on your time? Are you satisfied with the passing of time in your life?