The pandemic created a window for many to re-evaluate their attitudes toward time itself. Now we’ll find out if what we learned will stick
Another attempt to get to the bottom of things arrives Tuesday. InJenny Odell follows the threads she plucked in her best-selling 2019 debut,—which found an eager audience in people looking for ways to shore up their souls against the drain of productivity culture—and arrives at a sweeping yet personal challenge to assumptions Western society makes about the relationships between individuals and the finite hours in a given day.
Now, in the return to “normal,” we’ll find out if what we learned will stick, and perhaps give us new models for a happier relationship with time. What Odell can’t unsee is the fact that the pre-pandemic mainstream Western way of thinking about time isn’t the only way. Her conclusion, after studying how those norms came about and how they’re put to use today, is that time is not so much money but power.When people say they don’t have time, what they mean is they don’t have control. That lack of autonomy may come from a demanding boss, an internal voice, or existential-level problems such as climate anxiety.
That’s because, Ogden suggests, “you had this period of time in which life stopped, but time continued. And I think that got us all much more aware of the idea that time is finite, and it’s valuable. And when it’s lost, or when you can’t control it, it feels weird, and you want to know why it feels weird.”That said, this shift might not have happened were it not for a conference held years before the pandemic.
Of course, knowing that the brain’s experience of time can be shaped by our relationships doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to reset our internal clocks; if you don’t feel in control of your time, that’s not necessarily your fault. Where Odell concerns herself with the systemic societal and economic structures that constrain us, Ogden cautions that the way trauma alters one’s experience of time’s passage is a biological process that can’t be self-helped away.
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