Timer tools

Hello,

My life has many assisting tools. Just today I thought about how wonderful the timers are in my life. I have a timer on the stove that I use frequently. It saves me from burning food, getting to work on time, and stopping a pleasurable activity like reading so I can finish some chore. I also have a timer on the microwave, but I almost never use it.

Then there is the timer on the clocks, however because they are called alarms I almost never use them either. Who wants to be alarmed? Leroy and I just naturally wake up on schedule so it is rare that we set an alarm. The IPod has a timer that I sometimes use, but generally only when I want to stop meditating. The reason I choose it over the stove timer is the soft soothing tone that lets me know to come back. My cell phone has an alarm feature. I do not use it and just now I checked to see if I could still find it on the phone. It is easy to find, but the cell phone is not on my list of places to go for very many helps.

I am grateful that someone took the time to invent a timer. I remember the one that my mother used when she had the wood stove. It was a hand held circular, white battery less, device with a top that twisted. It is still possible to buy that type of mechanical timer. When she got her new gas stove that time was not used so much as the stove had a timer on it.

Do people without timers have a better built in sense of time. Or do they just think of time differently. I remember speaking with a Laotian refugee who told me that for them, “time is elastic”. Have we tried to make time rigid and conform to our ideas of what it ought to be? Or is time different for all?

Paula