The Clock That Doesn’t Keep Hours

There are two clocks we live by.

One hangs on the wall, precise and predictable, marking the minutes with a steady, unfeeling tick. The other lives inside us, a quiet, irregular pulse that measures time not in hours, but in moments.

The wall clock shows 7:03 a.m. The inner clock says it’s too early to get up for work.

The wall clock reads 6:47 p.m. The inner clock insists you’re running out of time.

Our inner sense of time is unruly. It stretches when we’re waiting for news, contracts when we’re in joy. It skips entire seasons while we’re on autopilot, then slows to a crawl in the middle of grief. No two people keep it the same way, which is why one year can feel like a lifetime to some, and like a breath to others.

I’ve lived years the wall clock claimed were perfectly balanced, yet my inner clock remembers them as uneven and strange. The months I loved flew past me like wind; the months I dreaded felt like they were stitched from endless, dragging days. And still, the clock above my desk kept its steady rhythm, unmoved by either my joy or my sorrow.

We’re taught to trust the clock on the wall. To obey its alarms, follow its deadlines, bend to its schedules. But I think there’s wisdom in listening to the other one, the clock that doesn’t keep hours. It’s the one that reminds us when we’ve been too still for too long, or when it’s finally time to linger. It tells us to stretch a conversation past midnight, to pause and watch the sunset, to take the long way home even when the minutes say you shouldn’t.

We don’t live in hours, we live in moments. The things we remember aren’t time-stamped by the clock; they’re stitched into us by how they made us feel. The wall clock will tell you a day is twenty-four hours long. The inner clock will tell you it can be endless, or it can be gone in an instant.

Maybe the art of living is learning when to ignore one clock, and follow the other.