I have an obsession with watches. Have you ever taken the time to stare at the graceful, yet precise and strict movement of a watch?s hand as it slowly glides across the surface of a cycle unrepeatable? Have you ever put a watch to your ear and listened to the dozens of screws and wheels turning and twisting in such perfect harmonic precision, just so it would emit that slight tick, which pushes the entire human race one second into the future? Given the pragmatic notion of our day, I assume most haven?t.
But then, why should they? Isn?t the world much too busy as it is for one silly person to stop and examine extensively the tiny machine strapped to his or her arm, whose only job is to tell you that work starts at 9 or it is 30 minutes to lunch or that it would be time to get drunk with friends in an hour? We merely assume that it is there to serve our daily needs, because it is us who purchase it, it is us who pay for the necessary batteries and services for it to keep going and going.
Yet it is that necessity for its existence that lures us into worshiping it, as something more than just a time piece. If you study a watch long enough, you will realize that it is a machine that whispers a sense of perfection and timelessness, and most importantly, it resonates with the ancient fear of mortality.
A watch is an icon of vanity. You may walk into dozens of clothing stores in a day and come out with Zara or Mango bags, but you could go to dozens of watch stores for weeks, maybe even months or years, and never spot that one remarkable piece that, like a siren, lures you almost drunkenly toward it.
It is inconceivable that we would simply want a watch based on its long-lasting reliability. What is it that we look for in a watch? Is it the way the metal wrist glows in the light? Is it the way it portrays our indescribable character? Is it the weightlessness of its presence? Or is it simply the price tag and the number of diamonds that shine wealth and power?
Anyone could try generalizing what I am struggling to explain by saying that a watch is simply an accessory of fashion, when it is something beyond mere physical appearance. It, just like the clothes we wear, reflects some form of our personalities, but unlike the fleeting nature of clothes and cell phones, one often wears the same watch day in and day out for years. Being something we see and wear every day, it must be beautiful, as well as reliable. It must be a companion that is ready to charm your date and at the same time prepared to be a strict boss when reminding you of working deadlines. It is our vanity that overshadows the true nature of the watch, which is like a cunning devil dressed to impress the unsuspecting victim into giving it their soul.
Unlike digital watches, analog watches are the least accurate when it comes to carrying the precise time from the very day you began wearing it. Ever so slowly the time you initially started with will erode by either being a second or a minute faster or slower, depending on its design and the reliability of its parts. It is however this imperfection, which makes one realize how soulless the precision of a cold digital screen with monotonous numbers is. By impersonating the imperfection in and around us, it can watch without worry of discovery, like a cameraman who hides behind bushes in order to spy on the untamed wild animals of a cosmopolitan Amazon. It is the documenter of our lives, the one that always watches and waits for us to do something unexpected within our brief moment of existence. It is as though we were made to be nothing more than entertainment for the curious omnipotent being strapped to our arm day in and day out.
The age-old expression to prove the existence of God is that if there is a watch on a sandy beach then there must be someone who made it, a watchmaker who is able to create something that resembles order and purpose. One could relate this watch as a metaphor for humanity. Then again our history speaks of a different truth, a truth that talks of an occasional pleasure for chaos, proof that there is an ignorant and destructive self lurking in us all. No, humanity cannot be the watch in this expression because we have yet to install order in the world, much less ourselves. We are also far from having purpose, otherwise Socrates and Plato would have been out of business.
Instead, our watch is there to taunt us, to laugh at our daily routine, to sneer at our ?quest? for meaning in a world devoid of anything permanent. It does so because it can, because that is its job, and because we unknowingly wish it to by making it live whenever it falters. For behind the shape-shifting mask worn to hide its own vanity, the watch is simply time itself?unquestionable, remorseless, constant and perfect.
Are we always in the present as the strict digital watch shows us to be? Every single day, while sitting at the back of a jeepney or wading through the inching traffic, do we not all drift away from the now and bring ourselves back or forward an hour, a couple of months, or even a few years? One lifetime is but a grain of sand compared to the history of what has been and will become, yet we spend most of it away from the present, in order to appease the anxious time traveler in us all. We travel the immeasurable distances of yesterday and tomorrow by using memories to revisit the past and dreams to fly to the future. As we travel, our watch will be there with a smile that is not a smile, with laughter that is hidden behind the sound of a tick, and a reminder that the master of the universe would never give even a second back.
(Rafael Lorenzo G. Conejos, 21, is a former professor of literature at De La Salle University.)
