Thinking of Time [Guest Post]
by Jonas Cannon
I'm thinking of time.
I watch videos by Adam Conover. If you don't know who Adam Conover is, a brief google search will be your guide. And you should do that brief google search because Adam Conover is one hell of an interesting person who will lead you to people who are even more interesting.
This one video, right, is about the passage of time, how we previously meaured it by decades (the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc), but, following the nineties, we began to measure times by generations. The millenial. Gen X. Gen Z. The umbrella, Boomer, which I am lead to believe now only refers to any adult of any age who holds outdated or conservative views.
As such, Conover argues that time seems to move slowly, because we aren't thinking in terms of the cultural climate of an era, but the traits of some distinct fictional being(s) that represent(s) "the times."
I thought this was a very interesting idea...that only scratched the surface.
I live on the precipice of the suburbs. I can guarantee you that most of the people here measure time by the height of their children. I'm happy for anyone who is happy to do so, but I hate it so much. I love that it is selfless in the way that parenthood is inherently selfless, and I hate it so much because all we have in this life is space and time; if time belongs to our children and space is what they inherit from us, then what the hell even are we?
Myself? I used to measure time, essentially, by the friends I made along the way. I didn't need to win over the world, but a year was not really a year unless I made at least one new friend. I can't tell you much about the anxiety-ridden time before my first son was born, but I do remember that it was while I was penpals with a punk icon who I won't name because if I do I'll suddenly become the chump who does things like that, name dropping and what not. But yeah, in a letter, they assured me that I would be a good parent becsuse "This is what we were made for."
I don't remember what G.W. Bush said about budget cuts but I can tell you exactly when I met my friend Sarah or my friend Max or my friend Ryan or about fifty other friends with varying degrees of accuracy.
As I traveled less, all of that changed. Eventually, I began to measure time by the challenges I set for myself. Learn blank, read about blank, make blank many zines by the end of blah blah blah. That lasted quite a while.
These days, though, I feel as though I've let go of the ruler. Time seems to fly and crawl at the same time and I don't have very much to say about it. If I even do still measure time and I don't but if I did, it would be by the people I've lost. Was it seventeen years since Eric passed away? Twenty-three since Astrid? Parents, still accounted for--I'm not "there" yet. But wait, hold on, no, trauma is NOT a measurement of time, or of anything at all except perhaps mental health.
I know people who measure time by their successes. Constant evolution marked by wins and trophies (literal or metaphorical). Others by the various homes they've made throughout life. Roots grown, then plucked from the soil. Others by the progress of their students. Others still by the political climate.
There are so many ways to measure time, and only some of them are linear. I love that. Your definition of time is the lens that you use to see the world. If you feel trapped in a timeline, it is because you have created the trap and then placed yourself inside of it.
This is one of the reasons why I love to go on vacations. By vacations, I don't mean the kind where instead of working all week I sit on the couch and gorge myself on forgetable movies and television shows. I love those vacations too, but no I mean the vacations where I leave the state or the country and feel like I am walking outside of every possible timeline. Life is not a week or a month or my offspring or my beloved friends or the length of my streak on Duolingo. Soon, time will be diced up into memories, but just then, there are only new sights and experiences that take place in a vacuum.
It's like I said, way up there, I've been thinking about time. I'm thinking of time.
Jonas Cannon is a writer and zinester from Chicago. They have written two books, The Greatest Traveling Circus and Especially Now--as well as a whole lot of zines. They live almost in the suburbs with their wife and two adorable chaos demons.