About Design: What Timeless, Wet Time Taught Me
Whenever I see a collection of water, all that comes to mind is time. It hasn’t always been this way. It began today, with a water bottle.
In transit earlier today, I took a long, hard look at my water bottle. It’s purple, not in the least a favourite colour, but has a sturdy strap, and holds enough water to last about three hours of work-drinking.
The bottle is plastic, largely unyielding, and fails miserably at keeping the water at any one temperatrue for a protracted length of time. All it does is measure, store, and distribute.
Just like time.
Water moves, controllable in finite amounts by the containers we design to hold them at bay. If you think about it, the waterbottle is a container, so is your mug, and so is the Kainji Dam, thousands of kilometres away in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.
But there is water we fail to control. The water in our oceans, twice a day, on our coastlines, reminding us of their independence with rising and falling tides; the water from the heavens, easily fickle, defiant of meteorology ever so often.
Just like time.
We measure it, hold it carefully within ourselves, our minds and consciousness. It rests, ticking away with seconds and minutes, jumping to life in calendar reminders, buzzing away with alarms.
For so many people, life is regimented by nothing but the passing of time. It is never ours to own, to control. Time is our master. Time is king. Time precedes us and will succeed us. Us, in all our many selves.
I would like to think that most people want a simple life, one where time and water do not matter. Of recent, time is of the greatest value to me while doing mundane things, such as depillating or exercising.
For the things I care about the most? Learning, loving and creating? Time is everything and nothing and all.
Rest in Time and Light,
‘Ria
P.S-In search of accompanying images, the “Time” tag yielded oodles of images of wristwatches. See what I mean? Time should mean something more than measurement.
