Opinion

Jarlath Kearney: Stop the clock and find time to think

Stop watching the clock and start thinking about making time
Stop watching the clock and start thinking about making time Stop watching the clock and start thinking about making time

HARD to believe we're almost in the twentieth year of the twenty-first century.

Thinking back two decades to the onset of 1999, commercialised excitement marked the climax of the second millennium. In the end,1999 came and went. The year 2000 arrived. Life went on.

The 'millennium bug' didn't cripple global IT networks. The apocalypse didn't roll in on the thunderous hooves of the four horsemen. The sky didn't fall when the clock struck twelve.

1999 was just a date flowing from the anno Domini calendar, amended in the Middle Ages by the Vatican's Gregorian calendar to synchronise seasonal activity.

So it's worth considering how much of our outlooks were - and increasingly are - influenced by how we view and use the concept of time.

Obviously, measuring time provides some planning order for daily existence. Birthdays, anniversaries, invitations, exams, dates, bookings, work, goals, objectives, seasons.

The difficulty is that time nowadays locks many of us into lives that are strangulated - not liberated.

There's the next meeting, the next deadline, the next bank opening, the next training session, the next school-run, the next constant commitment.

Time now keeps many people so busy that they don't make time to live their own actual life - or even to think about its truest fulfilment. And when some eventually do, well, time's often run out.

It's a contradiction in terms.

A key arbiter of time is modern technology. The development of communications this century has increased the demand for everything to happen immediately in 'real time' - with social media literally controlling lives.

Emails require immediate replies. Texts demand urgent answers. Notifications must be read. Group chats acknowledged. Conversations kept up. Posts updated. Relations masquerading as relationships.

Thinking is increasingly second place, because - wait for it - thinking takes time.

In this way, technology's control of time is reshaping our reactiveness to life, politics, economics, elections, society, news, and - most importantly of all - our core human relationships. Frequently it's for the worse.

So with 2019 approaching - the winter solstice, the celebration of Christmas, the New Year soon marked across various cultures - now is as good as any time to stop the clock. And think. About who we really are in our own lives. And who we want to be in the lives of others.

Time and technology aren't inherently bad partners. Two positive examples are worth noting from recent weeks, both showing complementary lifetime philosophies for meaningful human progress.

The first is David Attenborough's plea at last week's UN Climate Change summit in Poland when he very effectively saturated social and mainstream media with his message.

The past twenty years have been this planet's warmest continuous period on record. We are boiling in bloodyminded ignorance of catastrophe.

Mr Attenborough rightly declared: "Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is in the horizon. Time is running out."

The second is a comment from the film director Richard Curtis. Renowned for decades of popular romantic comedies like Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Notting Hill, he lashed the culture of elitist cynics who constantly elevate public negativity as their prevailing trend in media.

"I'm suspicious of the romanticisation of bad things..." he said.

"But if you make a film about a soldier who goes Awol and murders a pregnant nurse, something that's happened probably once in history, it's called searingly realistic analysis of society.

"If I make a film like Love Actually which is about people falling in love, and there are about a million people falling in love in Britain today, it's called a sentimental presentation of an unrealistic world. And I just don't believe that."

These exhortations open some ideas upon which our 'better angels' might focus this Christmas season: building a planet on which to survive and thrive together, cooperatively and sustainably, with enabling technology; and having a person or people - not just to love - but to gift with deepest affection and kindness, throughout our lifetimes.

And using that short time to dare courageously for both.

If we could encourage leaders of politics, policy and economics to embrace a partnership of 'planet and people' as their agreed starting point, then maybe we'd create more effective solutions - rather than perpetual problems - for humanity's future over the next twenty years.

We should weave a basic fabric - giving life back to the planet and giving love out to other people. Otherwise, the supposedly 'bigger' tapestry is threadbare.

But it all starts firstly with our own life choices. So think about making time. Nollaig shona daoibh.