Clocks by Lydia Wosen
“untitled” By: Clara Coukell
Clocks by Lydia Wosen
My fellow students and teacher, I don’t usually spend my time determining my stance on random objects, but I have been assigned to do so at this particular time. Knowing the consequences, I do not back down from any assignment, even one that requires me to declare my feelings about an aimless object. I have considered it carefully and taken my stance on this issue regardless of its lack of controversy. I have decided my feelings about clocks. Thus I present to you my feelings on clocks.
If when you say “clock” you mean the universal connector between the billions of people living on earth who recognize there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour; if you mean the causer of the shared frustration of not having enough minutes on a test or hours in a weekend; if you mean the savior thousands of students constantly monitor around 2:00 o’clock impatiently waiting for the long hand to reach the 6; if you mean the releaser of working parents that grants them freedom to retire home with a family waiting for them, hopefully with open arms; if you mean the realization that reveals life is too short to have regrets or a negative outlook and makes us value the time we do have with positivity and gratefulness; if you mean the “clock” that aids in the countdown of New Years, a reminiscent and hopeful celebration for the future, or the countdown for the new Spiderman movie, a monumental film that bridges the gap between three controversial Peter Parkers; if you mean the “clock” that aids in the recording of the specific time and dates for every human’s birth and death, to give billions of people annual celebrations of themselves in appreciation and self love, or the celebration of passed loved ones with brightly colored attires on El Día de Muertos- if you mean that clock then I am unquestionably grateful for it.
But, if when you say “clock” you mean the vessel for time that torments every living creature with the constant reminder that we’re slowly dying second by second, tick by tick, the ticking motion that will never ever stop no matter what you try; if you mean the “clock” that giddly ticks knowing it can’t be ceased, even if you physically break the mechanics of one there will always be another that continues where the previous one left off continuing its ticking; if you mean the dictator that determines when working people need to leave their comfortable sancturies to go to a place of labor and when they get to come back; if you mean the “clock” that can be as inaudible and insensible as a ghost as you waste away with drugs and pleasentrieas or spend years and years with the person you thought you “loved”; if you mean the “clock” that can be as loud as a ticking time bomb as you sit in the hospital’s waiting room waiting for news on a loved one or the apex of stress during a timed three hour test that will judge your “smartness”; if you mean the “clock” that is the fundamental root of regrets and shame for billions because they know they’ve wasted time they can never get back; and for those who are religious if you mean the the countdown to when your soul will either go to a place for the punished with deep depths of despair, or go to a place for the righteously rewarded with eternity to spend alongside the Holy Messiah- if you mean that clock then I most assuredly do not welcome it.
This is simply where I stand. I will not compromise, nor will I withdraw, as I’ve thought about clocks longer than the average human should.
