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Certain events mark the passage of time, for which there is no need for a timepiece. Marriages, births, and deaths are a few of those events. On these occasions and traumatic events, we mark the time by noting precisely what we were doing, where, why, and with whom.

Numerous songs are written about the passage of time, turning back time, and running out of time. Writers attempt to cram years, sometimes decades, into stories of their fictional characters. Our fascination and need to bend time to our needs are without limit.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my grandpa’s grandfather clock and that he would stare at it without making a sound. Perhaps, he saw the face of immortality in its face of intricate detailing. I have no idea when my fascination with time began, but it drove me to take a quantum physics course when many questioned my sanity for taking on such a task. Studying energy and matter, I was convinced, would give me clues into the machinations of time flow. I drove the professor crazy with questions about moving backward and forward through time. Studying Shamanism had convinced we can be “here and there” at the same time. Decades later, quantum physicists are catching up with what Shamans and other spiritual followers have known all along.

The mechanical clock was invented in A.D.979 in Kaifeng, China, although not for marking time as we know it, but for astrological predicting. As was on my grampa’s grandfather clock, the design included luminary markings for the sun, moon, and stars. When Tartars invaded China in 1108, after they took it apart for transport, they couldn’t put the monstrosity back together and instead melted it down for swords.

Kings and other rulers have sought to control time and bend it to their liking. In A.D.69, the Roman Emperor, Vitellius, paid the chief priest of Gaul a quarter of a billion dollars to extend spring by one minute, proclaiming he had “purchased time.” As it is said, a fool and his money are soon parted.

I’ve read volumes of books about time. Writers have designed blogs around the subject. And yet, all we seem to know is that it is something we cannot control. Clocks symbolize time in motion and, within their mechanisms, lives hope. Perhaps we are often too much like clocks, which produce nothing until their duty to bring notice to a particular moment. We each have our intricate inner mechanisms, and yet, like a clock’s inner mechanisms, we go through each day without notice until, at last, some reason calls to give meaning to our life.

My ramblings today regarding time have come to no astounding conclusion, but I leave you with this parting thought. With birth, we are given the gift of time. It is the manifestation of believing. “We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and a mystery.” (HGWells)