The state of frenzy in which we live now was a long way off in the nineteenth century. People lived under the same darkening sky, but they did not live simultaneously. This is an important distinction to contemplate today, when so much of what we do – and especially what we communicate to one another – depends of simultaneity…

People around the world – let alone in the next town over – did not occupy an agreed-upon sense of time and place. They lived on a multiplicity of slightly different schedules (John Freeman, The Tyranny of E-mail, p. 65).

He quotes George Miller Beard:

Before the general use of these instruments of precision in time, there was a wider margin for all appointments…men judged time by probabilities, by looking at the sun, and needed not, as a rule, to be nervous about the loss of a moment, and had incomparably fewer experiences wherein a delay of a few moments might destroy the hopes of a lifetime…We are under constant strain, mostly unconscious,oftentimes in sleeping as well as in waking hours, to get somewhere or do something at a definite moment (p. 78).

We have quantified time to exact precision. That’s why I know exactly when I am late for work. Or that I have stayed up far too late, like right now.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away. They fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day.

The clock is always ticking. Deadlines are bearing down. The day is gone. The night has come. The night has gone. The day is here again. The endless cycle. But it isn’t an endless cycle. The hands on the clock may go in a circle, but universal time is heading in a straight line. All the world may not realize it, but time has an end. The clock is not just ticking up, it is counting down. It’s not just flying, it’s migrating to a destination – for all the world, and for you. How much longer do you have left? Your Rolex, or Timex, will tell exact time for you, but it isn’t prophetic, it doesn’t know which tick will be your last.

If our time technology tells us anything, it is that we must ‘improve the time, for the days are evil.’ ‘Lord, help us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.’ If you have 10 clocks in your house, one on your wrist, one on your phone, one on your laptop, one on your iPad, and one in your car (that makes 15 give or take) and you aren’t numbering your days, stop hitting the snooze button. Wake up.

Realize that time is not repeatable. YOLO (You Only Live Once) is questionable. But there is no question about YOLRNO – You Only Live Right Now Once. What are you doing with it? Every tick or blink of the clock is a question mark.