Time

What is time?

Time is defined as the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole, measured in hours, minutes and seconds. Or however you would so prefer to measure it. Some count by breaths, by each tick and tock, by the sun and by the moon. It's this thing that slides all over you like an unseen river that flows and flows and flows.


What is time... right now?

It is 1.57am exactly as I type this line, the 54th second of this minute, and it's the early morning. I love the early AMs because you stop feeling this constant need to do something. It's a wind down period. The time frame when you somewhat leave for yourself to sit down and do whatever. Take your time... time has a moment to spare here on for the night is always slower than the day.


What was time to me today?

Today I woke up pretty early and with so much time in the morning, I managed to go to three different places by noon. It was productive and because I was so early, I had two hours to spare before meeting my sister.

For the past few weeks I jam-packed anything I could, FYP-related, into every single hour I had of the day. I woke up early to go to school to finish up my video-editing. I was printing till late at night. I've started walking back to hall from school because I've stayed till the last bus' gone. If I could maximise time, I would. Time had to translate into productivity. Time always has to translate into productivity. It's a global obsession.

That two-hour wait for my sister was weird for me. I didn't have anything with me, didn't know what to do. Half the time I just sat, watched people and read a book I just bought. Nothing FYP-related but ah, here's the funny part. A big part of why I do my FYP on nothing lies in the fact that within all that we do, every single day non-stop day after day after day, I wanted to find little breaks in between. I wanted to find gaps and voids and space away from all that we robotically pile on ourselves. Yet somehow nearing the end of FYP, I neglect the significance of nothingness within everything. I guess because I'm left with less than 3 weeks for FYP now, every single hour counts. But for that 2 hours, I felt relieved. For once I didn't have to be productive. Just wait. It felt really really nice.

I had lunch with Brian the other day and he asked me what my FYP was about and I merely told him "It's about nothing." Then he looked confused for a while, pondered and almost immediately said "Mindfulness?" "YEAH! How did you managed to get that so quickly! It's about mindfulness and mindlessness. Just thinking about nothing." He told me our lack of emphasis on nothing lies in the fact that we can't really quantify nothing. It's easy, on the other hand, to quantify time when we are doing something and being productive. Hence in that sense we always see doing nothing as a waste of time. Though we really need to stop seeing it that way and I don't mean doing nothing as in procrastination.

I haven't been talking much about my FYP here. But here's a summary! It's basically a recorded performance art on 8 things I did to think of nothing. So one of the things I did was counting my hair. Talks about how to derive into thinking about nothing, about the process both physical and mental.

I don't know what to think about it having being so involved in it for so long now but hopefully when all's up, I'll be proud.

Grad's show on the 7th May till 15th May, if you're interested. I think I'm more excited to see my batch mates' works. :) It's been a pretty intense year I can't believe it's ending.

ADM GRAD SHOW SITE


I shall sleep now. Tomorrow time = being productive will resume again.