The end of the end of time

Technology may giveth,
but it also taketh away.

In a secluded bay kissed by the still gentle mid-morning sun, the sleepy waters lap the hull of a solitary sailboat at anchor. In the cockpit sit three sleepy mariners casually working through a late breakfast. Or perhaps it’s an early lunch? That would depend on a time none of them has yet bothered to check.

One unfocussed mind wanders to a still distant airport rendezvous and flight home. One of the three develops a slightly furrowed brow.

“What’s today?”

With concentration made sluggish by almost total indifference eyes eventually begin to dart, eyebrows begin to rise, lips commence to pursing and finally chuckles start to break.

Nobody has a clue.

Escaping from time

Quite genuinely nobody has a clue. The ship’s clock doesn’t show a date, we haven’t bought a paper for days and our log-keeping has been rewardingly non-existent. Yesterday was an identikit of the day before and the day before that, a great day’s sailing followed by a great evening’s eating and drinking and a great night’s sleep. We haven’t listened to the radio or seen a TV for days. We’ve all lost track.

Good old Channel 16 on the ship’s radio set will eventually answer the question when we tune in for the latest weather. The GPS will know it too as will the Navtex receiver. And yes, those ubiquitous mobile phones buried somewhere within our bedclothes will tell us too. In today’s world few of us are ever in a position to totally lose track of time and still less not be able to quickly get it back. This is as close as many of us, certainly myself, ever get to it.

And there’s a curious pleasure to it, an almost spiritual, liberating and joyous sense of not only not knowing what day it is but also of not even slightly caring.

Escaping from escaping from time

I’m no psychologist. I can’t tell you whether the pleasure comes simply from the oddity and rarity of having no clue what day of the week it is, or whether it stems from experiencing a deeper, tangible sense of freedom from an ever more connected, 24/7 world; one in which we increasingly seem slaves to technology and progress rather than technology and progress serving us.

If it’s the latter, then it’s rather a shame, both for what it says about the way we live our lives today but perhaps more because we seem to be in the end days of the end of days. In how many sleepy, morning cockpits would that question have been answered in a heartbeat by someone simply reaching for the fully-charged mobile that never leaves their pocket? Or perhaps by the sweep of an arm waved in the direction of an always ready cockpit chart-plotter and the tapping of a few buttons?

In how many sleepy, morning cockpits would that question be answered before anyone had a chance to appreciate both the pleasure of it being asked and the joy of not being able to answer it?

Sadly, however few it may be, the number surely grows fewer by the day.