On Time and the Earth

Susanna Syassen

Modern life is shaped by a tension we rarely name directly. It is not only speed or distraction, but a gradual dislocation from time itself.

Time, as we most often encounter it, has become abstract. Measured in calendars, deadlines, metrics and performance indicators, it moves forward in straight lines. It accelerates. It fragments. It rarely pauses.

And yet the body does not move in straight lines. Nor does the earth.

The seasons return without urgency. Light shifts gradually. Soil rests before it yields again. There is repetition, but not sameness. There is change, but not rupture.

Modern systems, by contrast, reward continuity of output. They encourage the smoothing over of fluctuation. We are trained to override fatigue, compress transitions, and maintain pace regardless of context. The language of optimisation replaces the language of rhythm.

This has consequences.

When time is experienced only as acceleration, depth begins to thin. Attention narrows. Decisions become reactive. We adapt to systems that were never designed around the intelligence of living cycles.

The question is not whether technology is useful. It is. Nor is the question whether progress is possible. It is necessary. The question is what becomes obscured when time is treated solely as a resource to be managed rather than a medium in which life unfolds.

To attend again to time as lived experience is not nostalgic. It is not a retreat. It is a recalibration.

It requires noticing how the body responds to pressure. How concentration changes across the day. How seasons alter mood and energy. How landscapes shape perception. These are not sentimental observations. They are forms of data, often more precise than the metrics we privilege.

We are both analytical and biological beings. We design systems, and we inhabit bodies. When those dimensions of life diverge too sharply, friction increases. When they are brought into conversation, something steadier emerges.

Listening, in this sense, is not passive. It is disciplined attention. It asks us to measure differently. Not only in outputs, but in alignment.

Perhaps the deeper work is not to slow everything down indiscriminately, but to recognise that time has textures. Some moments call for acceleration. Others call for rest. Cycles are not obstacles to productivity; they are conditions of sustainability.

To live well in a technological age may require neither rejection nor immersion, but literacy in rhythm.

Time is not only something we spend. It is something we inhabit.