Disciplining the Time

Disciplining the Time

Víctor Manuel Guzmán Villena

The first of January is the beginning of the year for many peoples, religions, cultures and ethnic groups. It is a date of big celebrations and of new hopes. According to our calendar, Julian, and citing as an example a year 2008, points out the calendar of the Coptic ones that we are in the year 1723.

According to the Muslims it is the year 1427 (in memory of the flight of Mahoma of the Mecca to Medina). According to the Jews we are in the year 5768. It is necessary to add that the anecdotal fact of which, because of the French revolution, there began a new calendar that was starting on September 22, 1792 (year I) but that only lasted three years, being absorbed by the Gregorian one, whose reform entered in effect from 1582, which the Julian calendar corrects, and to establish the balance eliminates on October ten days: from 5 to 14!, but this reform did not come everywhere immediately into force. Consulting the perpetual calendar, the only copy is in Quito, Ecuador, in a historian's private library, there is the reform that was promulgated in 1582 and they were abolished in ten days.

In Germany a movement took place and the catholic regions adopt the reform in 1584, as in Bohemia, but in the Protestant regions the reform is adopted in 1775, almost two hundred years later, not to speak about Bulgaria, this is a fact that is convenient to retain that only adopted it in 1917.

In England the Gregorian reform is applied in 1752, for hate towards the papists, the Anglican ones also resisted two centuries.

In Latin America towns the Julian calendar was adopted after the Spanish conquest and imposed by force. The Mayan, Aztecs and Incas who were using different time measurements and who were done in accordance with their cultures and needs, were erased of the map of the science despite having big astrologers and astronomers.

The Mayan calendar not only has marked the time but it has indicated with big accuracy the solar and lunar eclipses and has a lack of coordination of only 2 seconds in 2 thousand years of its existence.

Hence would derive, in poetical terms walking for house nothing it exists so relatively as the time. Unable to fix its beginning, the same way of fixing cycles – its duration - and let's not say its end.

In the beginning it was not the clock, it was the Verb

The duration of the time depends on if we have a good time or suffer, on if the things move or they are calm, on themselves, if with the age, we project ourselves towards the future or turn the look backwards.

As for the end of the times we do not know with accuracy of which it consists, if must be understood by it that what we call time will stop existing or if there will supervene a type of time radically different from the one that till now has been showed to us.

How much time do we waste?

Exists the time sidereal: the one that measures itself for the apparent movement of the stars and more especially of the first Aries point. Exists the Paschal time. The Dictionary of the real Spanish Academy of the Language says to us that we can have good time, give time to the time, train it, cheat it, lose it, lift it and even make ourselves comfortable to it.

I am impressed exceedingly by the “dead time” of the waiting rooms in the public offices, in the medical offices and that of the sleep, where the secret of our survival is. A 50-year-old man has slept nearly 20 years. Some explanation fits: How much time do we waste watching TV , in front to the screen of the computer? …

The optimists usually say: "Every day is the best of the year” and “a quarter of an hour is more valuable than thousand golden ounces”. The pessimists answer that “there is no expense costlier than the time” and that “the year has 365 anxiety”.

Between some and others the eclectic ones for which everything depends on the concept of the eternity, assumption that the eternity can be a concept. The musicians know the discipline of the time as nobody, and in this line I would remain with Mozart.

There are painters of whom I would say that they do against themselves and against the clock: I am thinking about Van Gogh, Dalí or Picasso. The current architects, without time to conceive a cathedral, and that they do not aspire that his designs last, and up to the futurologists in his majority they stop every year perplexed on having thought about the advances of the XXIst century.

If it is true that we come from the water, since we are aquatic beings and today we are in the age of aquarium, era of transparence, crystalline and of peace, after leaving the terrifying age of piscis, era of change to base difficulties: The Inquisition, the Middle Ages, two world wars.

Really have been million years to get to our condition. Now it is anticipated that soon wings will sprout on us and that for a still unknown chink we will glimpse the universe.

“I have no time” acceptable phrase in mouth of Miguel Ángel but not in Leonardo da Vinci that was taking a lot of time to realize his masterpieces. Terrible in mouth of the executives, politicians, bankers, business men, since the ambition does that the time swallows them and that when they realize already they will not have time to enjoy it.

Therefore we owe time to the time and we all will go out winning. Well, if we do what we should do, but let's remember that suitable armchairs exist to ponder on the time. If we have the feeling of waste our time, the anxiety will supervene and they will place a pacemaker in us: apocalyptic vision? Sensible measurement – and if not to the time, I was thinking a night of timeless moon.