Alarmingly Annoying

ANNOYINGLY ALARMING
Alarms are a part of my life. It doesn’t take you time to notice it beep twice in about three hours if you choose to hang around me for that long. There is something each beep is meant for.  However, recently, with the sudden realization that I live in a part of eternity where  time is a factor ticking away, and every breath means I have aged just a little more, my alarm beeps every thirty minutes now. I just keep ‘snoozing’ it away. It might be annoying but what is alarmingly is the fact that there is a possibility to waste the most valuable resources I have at my disposal while constrained in this body: Time.
The length of our lives is simply measured in time and each second, including the one you have chosen to use up perusing through this piece will one day make up a whole lifetime. No matter what we have accomplished or chosen not to, time is a factor we have or could have used up. Everyone is given equal time in a day to run each race that is different and peculiar to us. This is the reason a good alarm comes in handy for me, rudely reminding me of a life that has seconds as its tiniest unit, easily spent, easily wasted and perhaps more used up and unaccounted for more than money.
Being in the habit of wasting time is a signal that you will mismanage every other resource ranging from relationships to money. People who value time in the true sense of it tend to spend it to cultivate long lasting relationships, building it by spending time with family and friends. These are some of the things that give a sense of fulfillment at the end.
We live in a tiny part of the universe where time is a factor. Whether you hold the theory of a big bang or not, the earth has a beginning, and really, just like every life that walks on it and will ever thread it, it has an end. It has a life span, turning into a big giant red and the energy emanating from the sun dissipating gradually, the end of the solar system as we know it. Everything has a time frame. To have a sense of constraint by time is one way to get on right with work. God created time and finished the work of creation within a time frame. It should be the same with every project if we must finish it. The whole idea of pleasure comes after work. Rest means a certain form of effort has been applied toward a direction. Rest is not a word to be used to substitute idleness. Rest is a word used after work is done.
The discipline involved with making each time count in life is the only form of self-control that serves as the first step in handling other secondary resources which may include money and valuable relationships.  And this discipline is acquired over time. It is inculcated in a deliberate and aggressive manner and comes only by shedding off the heavy weight when you’re prepared to run a race.
These weights differ from person to another. We may just need to ask what those things are that take our time without adding to our long and short term goals. In Kiefer Sutherland’s words “We don’t have much time”. The hours given us are just 24. That’s how long it takes for the earth to do all the rotation in its orbit. One thing that keeps running and can’t be trapped is time. It passes by in apathy regardless of whether it’s made used of or not.  And it’s coming again in another form with a name we have given it, called 2017.
Time will not motivate us to do a thing. It’s the sense of timing that does. This is the reason I have employed the service of an annoying alarm to keep me at alert. Something is passing by, though its called time, but it always measured up at the end to be called a lifetime.
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Teju Duru is a freelance journalist based in Ibadan.