Racing against Time

                                                             Racing Against Time

From our early days, we were cautioned about wasting time and advised on making the best use of time. As a young child of five years, we were given the first lesson “early to bed and early to rise/makes one happy, healthy and wise.”  We were told to learn fast and beat time saying “what grows in five years cannot grow in the fiftieth year.” As we reached the adolescent years, we were asked to write essays on Chaucer’s indelible words “Time and tide wait for no man” or Shakespeare’s “make use of time , let not advantage slip.”

It has always been time that has remained a bugbear for all of us. Time to get up, time to get ready, time for breakfast, time to leave , time for this, time for that… finally leading to time for eternal sleep. We are prisoners of time.   We often yearn for freedom from this obsessive compulsion with time. However hard we try, time is the winner. It tames us truly and squarely. That is why when one reaches the grand old age of retirement, we look forward to timeless ease to dot our activities (or non-activities). But time is far too powerful and its ultimate stronghold on us is seen when it dictates a cessation of all our activities. In fact time stares us on our face when we have nothing to do.

But in a paradoxical way, we tend to compete with time even when we know that we shall never win. It is often a rare case of our beating time that makes us combat with time. The other day my brother told me how he had to catch a flight from Frankfurt after attending a conference in a small town three hours from the airport. His German friend assured him of driving him to the airport in time to board the plane.  He accepted his offer though he was not sure how a three hours drive can materialize in less than that time- and that too in two and a half hours! The famed autobahns made it possible for the vehicle to zoom to 180-200 kms and got him to the airport with 35 minutes to spare. All through the journey, my brother said that he kept his eyes closed and had the nervous apprehension whether he will be all in one piece by the time he arrived at Frankfurt. It was scary, exciting, adventurous but he could not get over   the possibility of fatal crash that was at the back of his mind. Can they really race against time and sing and dance like Michael Jackson to the score “Beat it, beat it” or will time have the last laugh?

Narrating this incident, my brother said that German technology evidenced in their sturdy roads and sturdy cars made it possible for them to beat time. Glad that he with his friend had a taste of victory over time that day, but the moot question remained: Was it worth taking this challenge? What if the car had a tyre burst while zooming at that high speed or  what if the road surface had  developed tiny cracks because of the powerful force of the car pressure calculated as mass into acceleration(f=ma²)?

The question for our modern age- an age of advanced technology -is about the worthwhileness of such inventions that compete with time? Very often while driving through the crowded pot-holed roads of Delhi, I have timed the difference in reaching my destination between driving fast at 70kms/hour and driving at a moderate speed of 50kms/ hour and the difference has always been a matter of two minutes or sometimes less than that. (it is another thing if there is a traffic hold up that one daily comes across in Delhi). I have often spoken about this to my young students that no one will be able to maximize his/her effort in those two minutes and therefore it is better to be late by two minutes than be late forever.
What do we do gaining that extra time-even if the gain is 30 minutes? We have 24 hours in a day that translates into 1440 minutes. And so the time lost or gained will be a paltry 2% of one day (if there is a gain of 30 minutes). It is foolish to race against time, the eternal winner when nothing can possibly be achieved except to experience the heart thud to keep pace with time.  If we can prevent the frequent rush of adrenalin in our attempts to outsmart time, it is possible to lead a life free of stress and strain. It has become highly fashionable to say that there is so much to do and so little time at one’s disposal. Remember Buddha got his enlightenment after sitting under the Bodhi tree while Newton got his eureka moment watching an apple fall from a tree. Neither of them would have got their knowledge and wisdom had they pushed themselves to a mad frenzy to discover the spiritual and the scientific truths.

I find young mothers today buying a whole lot of educational videos for their children to view and learn so that they learn faster than other kids in the school. The result is many of these upscale market house children look bored and listless in the class as they have learnt them already.  I am often reminded of the tamil proverb sarcastically referring to such children as “ pinjele pazuthadu= maturing and ripening while still young”. Does the green fruit hasten to become ripe and yellow before time? It takes at least a fortnight for the green unripe fruits to turn ripe and sweet. The Latin proverb says: “Take time; much may be gained by patience.”It is possible for a genius to create a work of art or musical score in one go but it is not given to all other lesser talented mortals to attempt it. The latter needs time to execute what is possible within their limitation. That is what Harold Bloom said:”Talent does not originate; Genius must”.

We all know the story of the hare and the tortoise. The triumph of the tortoise is that it covered the distance with its limited potential and did not race against time like its competitor. It did not give up half way through because the hare had overtaken it. It continued with its journey to reach the goal post while the hare slept exhausted by its race against time. The proper lesson from the story is to continue with one’s efforts rising up to one’s potential even if that potential is not of a lofty standard. The moral children are taught is “Slow and steady wins the race” but if the emphasis is on “steady” rather than “ slow, it teaches us to persevere with our tasks as the race is not between us and time but between our potential and our ability to rise up to that potential. In other words, one should compete with oneself and not with others and not with time.

In his masterpiece Waiting for Godot, Beckett’s powerful character who loses his sight as time passes, makes the wisest statement about our obsession with the adverb “when” that is directly related to time. He says: “Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.” Time has its own schedule and there is no point in trying to figure it out to conquer it.

In a more poignant manner, we have the Ecclesiastes that states: “ there happens a time to kill, time to break down, time to weep, time to die, time to cast away stones, time to mourn, time to hate, time to rend, time of war” and follows it with a positive prophecy that there is “ a time to heal, a time to build up, a time to laugh, a time to be born, a time to gather stones, a time to dance, a time to love, a time to sew and a time of peace.”  

Yes, there is a time for everything. Let us take cognizance of time as the ultimate winner and let us accept in all humility our smallness in comparison with it and make use of the potential we have been bestowed with to do our tasks rather than waste it in racing against time.