An Alarming Post

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I know the snooze alarm was meant to give the sleepy morning person a second chance. The alarm goes off, a hand flies out to silence it but the body can't raise itself just yet. Snooze, the brain says. Five more minutes. I have discovered that snooze alarms are an interesting way to measure time. They show you just how much or how little you can or do accomplish in five minutes. And they slice up time and your life into manageable chunks. I have a lot of alarms set on my cell phone. There are the morning ones, meant to wake me a little, then a little more, then a lot more until finally, after I have ignored all those, The Man wakes me up just by talking to me. But there are more. There's the 7:00 am alarm to tell me that The Boy needs to be on his way to the bus stop. There's an 8:00 am alarm, but I can't remember what it is for. I keep it though, because it reminds me to find my phone and tell it to be quiet. There's a 2 o'clock alarm to tell me that it is 2 o'clock. That's a meaningful time in my life and always has been. When I was young, school ended at two o'clock and I could go home. It still signals school ending but I am at home, waiting for my peace to be broken by those returning from school. But when I don't hit the "Stop" button and the alarm goes off five minutes later, I am always amazed at the fluid nature of time. I hear the alarm going off in another room and if I am busy doing something, I ignore it. I figure I will go get the phone before the automatic snooze alarm comes on five minutes later. But that five minutes is a tricky thing. It goes much more slowly if I am busy than it does if I am idle. It flies by if I am sleeping. And it makes me think about life and time and how I waste both. My five minute life could be full of activity. I could produce results in five minutes. Or it could be empty, with nothing to show for it. A wasted five minutes. And there are only so many minutes in every human life. We don't even know how many there are. I am going to put batteries in the Christmas clock. It will play a carol every hour. I will be reminded of the hours passing and perhaps I will be encouraged to use them wisely. I am keeping my alarms, even the ones that signify nothing, because I want to be aware of the passing of time and how I am using the minutes I have been given. So many of my minutes have already slipped into history, with an unknown number of minutes still available. It can be alarming.