I Am Losing My Marbles

The following takes place between 12:00 and 1:00. This is the opening line for the fast paced weekly drama “24.” For the past month I have been hooked on the show after seeing the new season special on a Sunday night after football. This week I finally figured out that now they are just stringing me along. On this show nothing ever gets done in the hour. Most of the time either something new is starting, or they keep showing me clips of the events that started earlier. And honestly, there is just a running body count that is far too much for me to keep up with. This week I realized that I no longer cared for the show when I found myself preferring to talk to a friend while the show was running. That’s it, obsession over. I now have my sixty minutes of uninterrupted time back on Monday nights at 9:00 (that is until football season begins again).

I try to be fairly efficient with my time. In fact, I think that sometimes I am too obsessed with time. Looking around my small home office, there is all sorts of evidence of my time obsession. There are two large black and white radio clocks on the wall that keep precise time down to one millionth of a second. These are placed so that I can see the time from any vantage point in my office. My PDA and Outlook on my computer are constantly keeping time for me ringing out things I have scheduled or reminding me of an upcoming appointment or telephone call. My cell phone sits to my left with a large time display, and of course the system tray on the computer has the time neatly displayed to the right of the screen. I am not yet wearing my watch as I write this, but that is only because I forgot to put it on this morning when I started my day.

You would think that with this keen sense of the clock that I would always be on time for everything that I do. Instead, the opposite is true. I often find myself running late. While I am generally on-time for appointments (usually within 5 minutes or less), I normally need to break land speed records, find some crazy shortcut, or just plain run to arrive on time. I have existed in a state of frustration and usually panic over this until recently. As always, it takes the external observations of your friends to help you understand what is really going on. The diagnosis of my problem is that I tend to multi-task. I have been known to even read and write email messages while driving (please don't try this at home).

I entered the professional work world in the 70’s. I have pictures of me with my three-piece suit on sitting proudly behind my desk to prove it. I will not provide details here, but suffice it to say that the pictures depict colors, patterns, and fabrics that would be considered hazardous today. Back then we learned to manage in a minute. I even mastered the one minute reprimand as a young manager. In the early days of multi-tasking we learned to sign letters while talking on the telephone, and read your mail. This was particularly useful when talking with business associates or when you were included on those awful conference calls that pre-dated the internet.

Fast forward about thirty years. Today we live in a world where the constant beeping, chirping, ringing, buzzing, or digital ring tones are going off constantly. If these were not distracting enough, how many times have you had to listen to one side of a cell phone conversation in a public place? Somehow, we would be less distracted if both the people were there arguing together than we are when we hear the pleas of only half the conversation. We have all of these conveniences or devices because they will “save us time.” So, my question is “what are you doing with all of your new found time?”

I was reading this morning about a guy who keeps a small digital camera clipped to his belt. If a person can go to that extreme I can only guess that clipped to the same belt is a cell phone/email device. Before the new airline regulations came about I would bet you that this guy also carried a Swiss Army knife in his pocket, and likely has a Palm Pilot or some other device in his briefcase. Yet, with all of these time saving devices, I bet that just like me he still has to run to make his flight.

During a recent lunch meeting which lasted a little more than an hour, I watched as my two lunch mates checked their telephones/email devices multiple times. One of my companions actually answered the telephone, albeit to only say “I will call you right back” while he was actually talking. I have been guilty of these transgressions too. But now I have been cured. I turn off my telephone every day during the time that I spend doing research or writing. I have advanced to a level where I no longer even put my phone on vibrate during meetings. I have moved up to silent mode. I check email periodically (ok it is still about 15 times each day, but it is still periodically). I am giving real effort to this sense of unplugging.

I had a dream not long ago about a place where time was the coin of the realm. Everyone was paid with time. The wealthy lived forever because they could buy as much time as they wanted, and the poor died young because they had so little time. Still, in this world people grew old and suffered illness, but to die you had to give away all of your time. Your heirs would inherit your time and invest it to gain even more time. Bums on the street were begging by asking people “can you spare some time?” That concept frightened me.

Each of us really has the same amount of time every day. I once read a story about a man that kept a large jar full of marbles in his office. When asked about the jar he said this was his “time jar.” Every day he would remove a marble and throw it away as a symbolic gesture that another day had passed. The other day I completed a computer survey that said based on my lifestyle and other factors I would live for about 82 years. That means that I once had about thirty thousand marbles. If someone had placed marbles in my jar at my birth and removed one every day, today my jar would be two thirds empty. I have about eleven thousand marbles left. Today I will lose one of those marbles.

I can only wonder how I will spend the remaining eleven thousand marbles of my life. I know that back when I had some thirty thousand I wasted many of them. Yet, even then I thought that there just was not enough time to do what I wanted to do. I only wish that I had found my V.O.I.C.E. back when I had a lot more marbles. Still, eleven thousand marbles is quite a handful. I still have more than enough time to do all of the things I would like to do with my life. I wonder if you have been keeping track of your marbles. How many do you have left? You still have plenty of time to do what you want to do if you just begin today.

I have only just one minute, only sixty seconds in it.
Forced upon me, can’t refuse it.
Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it, but it’s up to me to use it.
I must suffer if I lose it, give account if I abuse it.
Just a tiny little minute, but an eternity is in it.
-Dr. Benjamin Mays