Hours Gained, Time Lost, and Unfinished Stories. Conclusion? Celebrate the Sacred.
A Freewrite
Writing prompt: Extra Hours
If days were suddenly 25 hours long instead of 24, what would you do with the extra hour? What would you cut from your life if you only got 23?
Source: Creators Hub
The beginning of a story (?)
Something happened with the clocks, or maybe with the sun, or maybe nothing happened at all and we just decided we wanted a change.
One day the time moved in a 24 hour cycle.
The next day, 25.
It kept going, higher and higher, 26, 27, 28, 29, until the workaholics were collapsing and the mothers were begging for a respite from the clock, how often could you move from snack time to nap time? The surfers were blissed out on the waves, the artists losing themselves in dreams and creation. The scientists puzzled over what was happening, the philosophers philosophized, and the restaurant owners adjusted their menus to make time for another midday meal. The marketing and advertisement teams around the globe went wild. The longer the days, the more time for people to consume, and the ones who were selling were ready. Productivity, health, sleep, recreation, media ….
… Nevermind
Oh no.
I’m bored with this story.
I’m going to be honest here, Medium. I don’t have a clear point. I’m just trying to work on my creative expression and this is one avenue for that.
The clock says sixteen more minutes and I could pause the timer and let this draft move to the in-between land of drafts-never-to-be-finished, but —
My days are 24 hours long. I know this, even though I don’t really know it in how I live. I forget sometimes, what a gift every hour, every moment is. I forget to live it that way.
Back to the question
It is a real question: what would I do if I had an extra hour in the day? Sleep another hour? Spend more time at the beach? Write more? Learn to cook and actually prepare nutritious meals, instead of snacking on rice cakes in the morning as I put off my tasks for the day?
And what if I had an hour less, what would be lost? I’ve been trying to minimize social media and checking the phone; I say this now but in eight minutes once my timer goes off, the first thing I’m going to do is open Whatsapp.
The sanctity of time
There is one day a week that has its own quality of time, a day when I do not check the clocks because the hour doesn’t matter, and I don’t check the phone because I am celebrating the holy.
This is the Sabbath, or Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest.
As Heschel writes:
“The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”
— Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath
Whether the days were lengthened to 25 or 35 hours long, or shortened to 3 or 23, there is always space to celebrate the holiness of time and the mystery of creation.
And from my end now, it has been twenty five minutes. So I’ll leave it as that ;)
