Anxiety In The Face Of The Passage Of Time
Time is a crossroads of paradoxes. On the one hand, it is an invention of the human being. He is certainly very useful, but he also makes us slaves. Also, when we would like it to go faster, it goes very slow and vice versa, at the best times it spins too fast. Thus, seconds pass slowly in the emergency room and very quickly in dinners with friends where the atmosphere is good.
Either way, its advancement or existence easily translates into impatience, anguish, or even anxiety. Anxiety which also participates in fear and anticipation. Because we all know that we cannot control what will happen and that it is very unlikely that everything that will happen in the future will be completely positive. Life, as much as we can try to anticipate things, also brings disappointments.
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
The clock that killed the miner
Here is a little story. Several men find themselves stranded in a mine and cannot get out. Fortunately, they were able to inform the outside world of their situation and they are waiting to be rescued. After assessing the situation, they were told that it will take at least three hours to unblock the passage from the exit.
On the other hand, the same explosion that blocked the exit can knock the roof over them at any time. On their faces, we can see the reflection of fear which implies the threat of another landslide. They are experienced miners and they know they can be buried under a mountain of dirt in a second.
Among these stranded minors, only one has a watch. The others ask him all the time and the chef realizes that this increases everyone’s anxiety level. Thus, he asks the owner of the watch that he only indicates the time changes and the others, that they refrain from asking.
Eventually, the rescue team can get to where the miners are. They can save the lives of everyone except the owner of the horse who died of a heart attack.
Why ? For he was the only one who was allowed to be in constant contact with this source of anxiety, and he was the only one who reached disproportionate levels of anxiety. On the other hand, he was also the only one for whom the time was very long, so long that he ended up consuming his own life.
“Nothing makes us age faster than thinking intensely that we are getting old.”
-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg-
What can we learn from this story?
That time stands still when we stare at it and it runs when we are not paying attention. The miners who had no clocks had no other remedy than to direct their thoughts to other things that were not the movement of the hands. So they thought what they were going to do when they got out of there.
The miner who was saved focused his attention on this anguish. Because of his watch, his mind could not divert minutes, which gradually increased his anxiety, until it reached a level that he could not bear.
We can choose to be minors with a watch or without a watch when the weather becomes an anxiety-inducing stimulation. We can decide if we want our mind to devote itself to constantly updating time or, on the contrary, we can deflect our thoughts and bring them to more pleasant and above all less distressing places.
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