For almost a year now, the clock on my wall has been telling me that it is 2:52.
Behind the splintered plastic face, the minute and hour hands remain stationary. The thin red second hand bounces between the 18th and 19th second rejecting the machinery that urges it on.
Tick, tick, TICK. Tick, tick, TICK.
The hand bounces, moves forward and then jolts back violently, as if moving forward a second in time has burned it viciously.
I know what it is like to protest the passing of time.
Time for me represents everything that I don’t want to happen. Change, distance and unfamiliarity. Too often do I find myself thinking that time is the reason that I have had to deal with the majority of sadness that I have experienced in my lifetime.
I do not believe that sadness is a mindset, I do not often believe that people have a choice in the matter of sadness. But I do believe that people have a choice in the matter of misery.
I more often than not battle with anxiety over the things that I have said and done. But it is hovering in that second that causes the anxiety, rejecting the point of moving on that causes the distress.
The baggage that people carry is what happens when a moment is dragged on through time, through that extra second that hesitation creates. The further and further away from it that you are, and the more that you are attached, the heavier that baggage is, the more weight that it has gained from extra seconds that have been adding themselves to the weight of the moment.
Tick, tick, TICK.
With every pull against the tide, another bit of weight is added to the luggage that is toted on a person’s back. With every new experience comes potential weight and thus potential heavy-heartedness.
All I know is that my resistance to letting things go is the type of baggage that inherently brings the danger of obsession. Saved seconds, moments when I push against the movement of the second hand, those are the moments that create baggage.
Who am I to say that baggage is wrong? According to How I Met Your Mother’s Barney Stinson, “Baggage is the cornerstone of America’s greatest national product.” And while perhaps I do not find agree with him in calling porn the greatest national product, Stinson does have a point. Baggage is what helps to shape a person’s life, the bad–and good–choices that help to form past history and personal experience.
Tick, tick, TICK.
Tick tock goes the clock, even for those who run away from confrontation. It is what is done with the time that is given, how that time can move past and through the moment, that truly makes second hand move forward.
