Most of the time, we speak and write without fully considering the motivation for our speech or the origins of our words. This is just as well; if I stopped at every juncture to consider why I chose “speak” instead of “talk” or past tense instead of present, I’d get even less on paper than I already do. Also, no one would ever want to talk to me.
Sometimes, however, it’s worth it to take a closer look. This August, I interned at the Oxford English Dictionary, drafting definitions of new words and revising existing entries. (Next time you look up a word between gobble and gobbledygook, think of me.) Writing definitions was much harder than I expected; words are actually rich tapestries with multiple shades of meaning—each with a complicated, often unexpected history. And those tiny historical details and nuances of usage gave me a whole new way to look at the world.
The ability to articulate abstract concepts through language is a vital distinguishing characteristic of humankind. And within the human race, individual languages unite their respective speakers around a common means of information exchange—facilitating everything from love and marriage to scientific advancement. Yet these commonalities also alienate non-speakers, augmenting differences and obstructing mutual progress. Language, used in different ways, underpins great human achievements and great human tragedies in equal measure.
Every other Friday, my column will address a topic through the lens of a single word. Sometimes examining that word will offer insight into the fundamental terms of a debate or the quintessential nature of an experience. Other times, I’ll simply present a new or unconventional way of thinking about something—a mental massage, if you will. Often, when we ponder the world in search of answers (especially in light of our shortening attention spans), we keep looking around for new information when we ought to just take a closer look at what we already know.
This week’s word reflects the start of a new year, a new semester and (for seniors like me) the traumatic countdown to the real world. I’ve decided to start small: time.
Fittingly, the OEDadmits that the origins of time are murky. Directly inherited from Old Germanic, time and its close cousin tide (which was more common in early use) could have inherited the same base as the Ancient Greek and Sanskrit words for “to divide.” Or they might relate to a different base, reflected in the classical Latin and Sanskrit for “throughout the days” and “all the time.” Or they might be related to Armenian for “age.” In any case, time has been around, to put it lightly, a long time.
The OED lists no fewer than 35 distinct senses of time in its noun form (most with one or more sub-senses) plus dozens of compounds and special usages. The first sense, which precedes the OED’s earliest date of formal recognition (1150 A.D.), reads: “A finite extent or stretch of continued existence, as the interval separating two successive events or actions, or the period during which an action, condition, or state continues; a finite portion of time…; a period,” e.g. a long time; for a time; during this time. The final, 35th sense is scientific: “A particular system of measuring or reckoning the length of the day and hence the passage of time,” e.g. solar time.
I’m concerned here with the abstraction of time into a quantity of something to be saved, spent and wasted, documented by sense number 10: “The fundamental quantity of which periods or intervals of existence are conceived as consisting, and which is used to quantify their duration.”
The first thing most people (and especially Duke students) would say about time is that there is never enough of it. This is true in trivial and profound ways. We might not have enough time to check our answers at the end of a test; we also might lament the loss of someone who had “too little time” on this Earth. Given how much we treasure time (or at least believe that we should), why do we insist on chopping it into ever-smaller chunks?
On a large-scale, dividing time into years, weeks, days—that all makes sense. After all, historically, measuring time acknowledged and anticipated significant changes. Methods of measuring time arose because its passage signified things vital to people’s survival, like the start of a harvest or the dawn of a new period of light and warmth (which we might call “daytime”). But when, today, we start to arbitrarily divide time (lawyers and their billable six-minute intervals come to mind), it loses this important meaning.
I’ve stopped looking at the clock, rounding up to the nearest hour and deciding I’ll start my homework, call my parents or do my laundry then, just because that’s the next clean start. Maybe I should get up and do it immediately. Or, maybe, I’m doing something more important and it can wait until whenever I’m ready. You should rule your time, not the other way around. We have to deal with externally-imposed schedules enough without setting ourselves up for internal disappointment as well.
In that vein, why start our resolutions on January 1? If healthy eating will be good for me then, wouldn’t it be even better to start as soon as possible, today, now? If we wait for the “right” time all the time, we’ll never get anywhere. Aristotle said in his Physics that “time… is both made continuous by the 'now' and divided at it.” There is truly no time like the present. Our obsession as a society with compartmentalizing time and creating routines springs from a preoccupation with the past and present. We don’t give enough weight to the inevitably dwindling nature of our future time. In any increment, it is not (as we should realize) infinite; you will never have another today.
As for seniors’ dwindling time left at Duke, I’m afraid there is no denying that bittersweet truth. As arbitrary as the idea of time may be, its passage is very real. This makes it all the more important to spend it wisely and meaningfully, doing what makes us happy with the people who make us happy.
Lauren Forman is a Trinity senior. Her column runs on alternate Fridays. To suggest a word for a future column, please email Lauren at lauren.forman@duke.edu or tweet her at @lauren_forman.
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