Hourglass

We mark yet again the end of a year, the trace of history, the passing of time. And it is that time we set new resolutions, project futures, emplace hopes and dreams for the coming year.

Yet why do we celebrate the end of a cycle and desire a new one? Why do we rejoice in what is merely an arbitrary concept of entities passing through, flowing, and 'moving' somewhere. Why do we exult in what is perhaps a mental measure of our ageing process.

Time (as it is so commonly touted) the very essence.

But what is time? Its definition is, perhaps like all linguistic signifiers, elusive and dislocated for one can only explain time in the discourse of signifiers. We never can explain time without gesturing to other signifiers. Time has always been, is and always will be defined in terms of its manifestations, of other sign systems.

For many, time is a concept known as minutes and seconds, the ticking of the clock, the digital turn on the screen, the ripening of years, the succession of generations, the passing of moments, the setting of milestones, wealth and profit, the rising and going-down of the sun, daylight and darkness, revolutions of the earth, distance, duration, memory, deja vu, the beginning and the end, the past, present and future, life, death, and eternity.

However we choose to define it, time cannot be defined. It is always already the impossible. Yet it dictates social structures and convention, manipulates our routines, cripples the mind with fears of mortality, establishes culture and cultural beliefs, tradition and action, entraps with transcience. And when we ponder on how mankind celebrates somewhat significant and cherised moments such as a birthday, the passing of a year, and the enterprise of festivals and festivities, we ask of ourselves why.

Everything is built on the unchallenged dogma that time passes and therefore precious, invaluable and real...

But Time is the very construct of man. It is artifice itself.

Devised by the Sumerian civilisation in 2000BC, refined by the Greeks and Romans, mechanised by the English, adopted by the world, time is, for all its worth, a construct, perhaps an illusion. And so are all facets and the many faces of time - the lunar, solar, gregorian calendars, dates, months, years.

So here's to a Happy New Year. There is indeed much to celebrate when we realise how we have become victims of our own devic/se.