A Second Essay on Time

My first memories of time's passing were when, as a child, I "waited" for Christmas. Almost everyone has the memory--of days passing with interminable slowness until the "big day" arrived. But the stronger memory for me of how an awareness of time shaped me comes from the early 1960s, when I had my first notion that there were time zones in the world. The situation? It must have been in 1962 or 1963, and was also on a Sunday afternoon in the Fall. I wanted to spend Sunday afternoons watching professional football, though my dad didn't like me doing so because he felt it bred indolence in me. I should be out "doing something" on a nice, crisp Fall Sunday afternoon in CT. So, I generally walked around my neighborhood with a radio glued to my ear. But around that time, I was overjoyed to discover that the TV networks were beginning to broadcast a second Sunday afternoon game (I couldn't watch the first), which began at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time (1:30 Pacific). Why? Because there were new teams on the West coast and they were "three hours behind" us in the East. I didn't really understand the concept of how someone could be three hours behind, but it allowed me to watch some football, because by 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. it was getting dark, and I had to come home. Then, I could watch football until dinner.

I was so grateful that there was such a thing as time zones, because I thus got to watch the fledgling Oakland Raiders play pall on various occasions. As I was beginning to fall in love with words at that age, I was fascinated that the name of the park where the Raiders played was called "Frank Youell Field." I wondered why "Youell," which is pronunced like "Yule," was spelled "Youell." I went around school the next week as if I was broadcasting a game from Frank Youell Field, joyfully spelling out the word to the few people in my fourth grade class who would listen to me.

The concept of time zone not only liberated me but made me want to live in CA. Why? Because I felt that in CA, where "Frank Youell Field" was, there were 27 hours in each day. They were "three hours behind," and therefore had an additional three hours. Which meant that I could stay up much later if I lived there. Which meant that it would be light later. Which meant that life would be so much more fun! I finally moved to CA in 1967, living only 30 miles from Frank Youell Field, which by that time had been replaced by the Oakland Coliseum as the home venue for the Raiders.

Stealing Time

If time zones ended up confusing and liberating me, it was the notion of stealing time, first internalized in 1974, that has significantly defined my life. Everyone knows that just as your opponent in a high school football game "put on his pants one leg at a time," so we knew that everyone has the same number of hours to accomplish things in life. But I managed to find a way to "steal" hours. How? Well, in Fall 1974, my first year of theological seminary, I recall reading John Bright's History of Israel. When describing the ancient Hittites, a 2nd Millennium BCE group of people in present-day Turkey, Bright gave a footnote saying, "Conveniently, O Gurney: The Hittites." I remember thinking, 'Hm. What does the O stand for?" and why is it "convenient" to read O. Gurney?' My grandmother had just remarried a few years previously, and the name of her new husband was "Ollie." I wondered if Gurney's name was "Oscar" or "Ollie" or some weird English/Biblical name like "Othniel" or "Obadiah." I had to repress my questions until the end of the term because of all the work on my plate, but the excitement and uncertainty was building up. I completed my finals on a Friday morning, but didn't have to fly out of Boston for CA until the next day. Thus, I had 24 hours to do the variety of things I needed to do before going home. What did I do? Spend the time with friends? Relax and do some shopping? No, I hightailed it over to a smaller library in town where they had a copy of O. Gurney's The Hittites.

The library was open well into the evening, and I recall getting the Penguin edition of Gurney's 1952 work (even the title page only had "O.R. Gurney"), opening it and settling in for several hours of reading of this "convenient" book. No one was in the library but me. I delightedly learned about Hattusilis and Mursilis and Hittite sovereignty treaties and various Hittite myths. It felt so good to me to be laying a foundation of knowledge in Hittite studies and doing it while everyone else was doing something else. I was, as it were, stealing time. Everyone was celebrating pre-Christmas fun, but I was building knowledge, knowledge that they would have to wait to build until after they finished partying (though, now that I think of it, not many of them might ever be tempted to take Gurney's book off the shelf and read it, however "convenient" it was).

Stealing Time and Time to Love

I think it was this feeling of empowerment through "stealing time" that has profoundly influenced my life and how I view time. In short, I often look to the time when no on else is working as the time I want to spend my most concentrated effort at working. Of course, I work when everyone else is "supposed" to work. What else would you do? But then, while people are shopping, gathering in a convivial fashion, doing all sorts of things to "refresh" themselves or to pay debts to others in various ways, I am free to steal some more hours. I can dig deeper foundations, can root myself more clearly in knowledge.

Yet this pursuit has had a downside, I believe. The downside is that I haven't really had "time" for love in life. Well, I was married, to be sure, and I had 24 years in marriage, many of which years were happy. I have two wonderful children to show for the time, in addition. But somehow, both because I don't simply have one field or one "job" in life, and because I developed an early commitment to "stealing time" here or there, I haven't yet come to a point where I can take "time" for some other essential and valuable things of life. Each year I hope that the next year will be the time for it, and so I hope that 2009 will see the "time for love" as well as a less frenetic focus on production and more on enjoyment. We will have to see--but I imagine that my ability to move in new directions will be because I have thought about, and embraced, time in a different way.

3942