Does anybody really know what time it is?

Did anyone else know, before they read Toelken’s article, that the “real” length of a year could be anywhere between 354 and 365 days long? Was anyone else bothered by the fact that we have no way of really knowing which one is “right”?

I mean, I expect reading from my classes to present me with challenging ideas and make me think, but the notion that we do not and cannot truly know what time it is, bothered me. This provocation led me to consider an aspect of my worldview that I hadn’t before: the way I view time. I know worldview, as defined by Toelken, is a term used to encompass much more than the “passage of time”, but of all the aspects of folklore and worldview that he mentions, this was the one I found most striking.

I have been taught that to be late is both disrespectful and disadvantageous. Now this isn’t an earth-shatteringly controversial opinion. Generally, people in the western world consider it rude to be late. There are plenty of examples where this reinforced in our culture: if you’re late to practice you run laps, in middle school and high school tardiness equals detention, if you’re late to work to many times you get fired. The list could go on and on. Perhaps this is more “folk-way” than folklore, but the rule in my family is “early” is on-time, “on-time” is late and “late” is unacceptable. It’s family tradition to be on-time (which means everyone is early). Toelken’s point about the socially constructed idea of “time” makes me realize that this family custom, no matter how helpful and healthy, is entirely dependent upon an un-natural practice: knowing what time it is.

I mean, ancient-man didn’t ever “clock-in” to work; he never set a timer to keep dinner from burning or an alarm-clock so he wouldn’t sleep too late, and my guess is ancient-man never got scolded by his parents from coming home past curfew. Yet, ancient-man still made calendars. I’m sure he didn’t calculate the exact number of seconds that separate the lunar year from the solar one, but he did keep track, despite having nowhere to be late to. That means something; I think the way we view our time defines how we view the world. Socially constructed or not, what my faith and my family (and what I guess is folklore of my life) tells me is that the concept of time is valuable. If there is a meaning in the larger grander idea of time, then there is (or should be) a purpose in the way it has been and is being spent.