Time As a Conveyor Belt

I read a book in June by Oliver Burkeman, entitled Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. It’s a really great book, not at all a self-help book about time management, thankfully, and I really enjoyed being surprised by how he approached the concept of time.

I’ve always felt a little panicked about time, about how it constantly drips past and things change in front of us without us even noticing. It’s probably part of the reason why I started photographing things around my room when I was eight. “If I don’t capture it now, it’ll be gone forever.” I apparently had existential dread when I was 8.

The feeling got way worse after I had kids. Especially since I had my kids after the age of 35, the calculations of “how old will I be at this kid’s _____ milestone moment” are too easy, and too overwhelming.

Anyway, near the beginning of this book, Oliver credits Edward Hall with a metaphor of “time as a conveyor belt,” and goes on to describe it:

“Edward Hall was making the same point with his image of time as a conveyor belt that’s constantly passing us by. Each hour or week or year is like a container being carried on the belt, which we must fill as it passes, if we’re to feel that we’re making good use of our time.”

I got the distinct visual of the famous conveyor belt episode of I Love Lucy (later recreated by Family Guy). But, in this visual, the gag is backwards. Instead of removing and packaging a product from the belt, we’re removing pieces of ourselves to fit into the time that just keeps moving past us. We’re expected to fill each time increment with “meaningful moments,” to “cherish” it as it rolls past us. And in true Lucy style, the conveyor belt moves faster and faster as we get older, and if we get caught up in it, we can be overwhelmed with it, with the math of life that always ends the same way.

We can’t possibly fill every moment of every day with meaningful, “cherished” moments. It’s impossible. To be on, vigilant, cherishing everything all the time, aware of how time is moving and yet unable to do anything about it… it freezes you. And you end up sitting still and watching as the time conveyor belt slides on by.

That’s the point of Oliver’s book, by the way. That by trying to do it all, Lucy style, you end up doing nothing of value. You must make choices. You must come to terms with the fact that life is finite. You must choose what you will do with the finite time you have, accept that not every moment will be worth cherishing, and maybe not try to take 15 pictures of the interior of your bedroom because you think at the time that it’s worth remembering for all eternity (it’s not). [I may have added that last part.]

There are things worth cherishing, savoring, capturing. But those things don’t require (or permit) you to slow down the conveyor belt of time in order to appreciate them. They require you to slow down. To admire a hummingbird, you don’t grab it and stop it from beating its wings faster than you can blink. You pause and hold your breath, watch as it hovers for a moment before flitting away. You let it be what it will be, appreciate it for what it is, and keep going.

If you’ve found yourself looking around at your life and noticing moments you wish you could remember longer (while also being able to see yourself in those memories), the dark cold stillness of winter is a perfect time to schedule me to come by one morning to capture it for you.

Read about some in-home sessions I’ve done to help slow things down for clients, here and here.