The meaning of time...

If you happen to find yourself in the middle of a recovery period from a health situation, as I do right now, then you'll discover that time takes a whole different meaning. I reckon this is also the case when you find yourself confined into a prison for a prescribed period of time over which there is not much you can do.

I mean, when we lead regular lives we are actually programmed to live as by a protocol. Wake up in the morning, breakfasting, to school or work, back home, dinner, TV, sleep to start all over again. Waiting for the weekend and some bank holiday to get the time pressure off our system. When you are functioning under this self progressing disciplined state of affairs, there is little freedom of movement to put any significant variance in the segments of activity that constitute your life and that of your family. You'll have to put up with living within those constraints. Few people achieve better control of their time than what I described above.

Who are these folks then? Potentially all who have plenty of time for anything and no pressure by anyone else to comply to time-lines, deadlines and target dates. Retirees, prisoners, homeless, people who recover from medical situations... in general, all those who are not adding any value to the system but live at the cost of the system.

I woke up at 3 am yesterday and stared at the ceiling, sleepless. The laser clock showed exactly 3 am in red digital characters projected on that same ceiling. What do I do? Go back to sleep is the only option if the regular program a few hours later would be for me to travel 2 hours in a traffic jam and be at the office for a 9 o'clock meeting. Not now, though. So what do I do. Leave the bed and walk to my SOHO. Played with a brand new Dell Vostro for an hour until my eyes close down and walk back to bed for another few hour sleep. Eventually, when I wake up at past 9:30 am, the radio was reporting jams and I felt just in heaven. This is what I mean with full control of time and destiny. Time will not rule me and tell me what to do... I'll just do what I want to do and time will have to accept this. In a sense, if you live like this, time doesn't even exist in your mind.

It would be 'nice' to live like this... but as I said, only the 'achthos arouris' (Homer, ballast of the earth) can afford it and if everybody on the planet did that, we'd still live in caves and die of flu. But if you found an opportunity for a short time to just do that, and for longer after you paid your dues and retire to a happy retirement, then just do it. And deeply enjoy it! I am enjoying every bit of it!