measure – Sillyfrog's Blog

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “happy place.” Write the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “happy place.” Have fun!

I want to talk about Time. Human beings have calibrated it to milliseconds and like many things we make possible to measure, we feel that we can manage it. Don’t get me started on the ‘Climate Crisis’. The arrogance of human beings is beyond measure. The belief that we can control or manage the Natural world is absurd. But I digress.
Time is an oppressive force according to my sensibilities. Escaping that ‘weight’, even in small episodes, is my ‘happy place’. I don’t wear a watch. Why should I? The ticking of time is all around us. Clocks are everywhere and the calendar is mentioned or referred to many times a day. But I want you to know that it is possible to step away from that tick, tick, ticking existence.
Have you ever been absorbed in a book, movie, or project, and lost all concept of time? To me, that is the most freeing place I can be. Freedom looms large in my soul if you haven’t noticed.
There are times while I’m at my camp when I feel weightless and lost. So much so, that I ask what time it is and truly have no idea if it’s 11:00 am or 2:00 pm. It’s a glorious experience that to many on ‘timed existences’ would be dizzying and might even give them a feeling of being off-balance.
Schedules and deadlines are necessary, but I dread them. I love winter in New England for the peace, beauty, but mostly for those snowstorms. On a snowstorm day, life slows almost to a stop. Businesses close, travel is unlikely, and no one expects you to BE anywhere. The world is yours for your own sake.
Gosh that’s grand!
I often write about ‘living in the moment’ and I pursue that every day. In retrospect, my choice to spend most of my days with children [animals too] came from my, then unrecognized but looming, pursuit of shunning time. Kids and animals truly do live in the moment and that is where time releases you from its grip.

I am an unapologetic Star Trek fan and have been since I first sat too close to the ‘boob tube’ in the 1960s drinking in all the mind-blowing themes it presented. This stream of consciousness brought one of my favorite themes in the movie Star Trek Insurrection immediately to mind. It is the perfect ‘cherry on top’ of this post. I’ll share it below with a brief explanation for people who are not Star Trek buffs.
Happy Saturday friends! Try to take some time for yourself today!

Here are two (very short) scenes from Star Trek Insurrection that express what I’ve talked about.
Captain Picard and his crew have encountered a foreign human race who live on a planet that, because of unique conditions, are capable of living for centuries. In these clips, he learns a lot about time from one of the inhabitants. Enjoy!

https://lindaghill.com/2022/10/14/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-15-2022/

I have these extraordinary internal dialogs while I am alone in the woods.

My particular subject was numbers. I really do not trust anything that seems concrete. Numbers are so over valued. Polls mean nothing…too many variables. Grades come far from mapping what a student learns and credit scores are a joke.

I hope I am not too vague with my statements…

Consider that you are a custodian. Your duties will be to maintain either 200,000 square feet or 20,000 square feet. Heck, you choose the smaller number. Your footage ends up to be the entire perimeter of a store. This includes all of the windows,entrances,trash bins,offices and high traffic areas. The one who chose the 200,000 sq. feet, rides a floor buffer.

It was inferred that I cheated on a Biology Final. I loved the subject but was very lax about completing homework assignments. My overall grade was about a 79. My final (I have never cheated.) was a 97. My teacher made a comment which I cannot remember BUT it inferred that I must have cheated. On paper, my grades said I did not know the material. My final, proved that I did.

Take a poll at a local business. Set up every day at 9:00 am.

Take the same poll at 4:30pm ,for a week.

Move to a Southern state and take the poll.

Take the same poll to the mall.

Can’t you imagine that those poll takers might have different opinions based upon age,employment and region? If you only sample one place at a specific time, what have you learned? If you are targeting a particular demographic, you may get an inkling BUT even those results should not be considered concrete. Even the weather is a factor, those who walk may not go out…etc.

I know of people who have paid their bills religiously, with cash, are worth a million dollars and have no or little credit. Come on!

Numbers may work for or against an argument and are easily manipulated. Life has too many variables to even entertain that numbers can measure anything pertaining to human behavior.

I never trust them.