Oops!

Johnny was late. His talk was about to start in twenty minutes, and he was still in the City, riding his bicycle through heavy traffic.

According to his calculations, he had a good chance of arriving at his local Toastmasters Club in less than twenty minutes if he pedalled with full power. Johnny’s main problem was not the distance, though. He had no idea what his talk would be about. He needed to find a topic and work out his presentation on the way.

The talk was supposed to be only five minutes long, but this can feel like an eternity for the unprepared victim. So Johnny’s mind was spinning, and so were his legs. And at the same time, in his head, he was already on stage, doing an improvised talk.

“Hello. My name is Johnny, as most of you know. I joined the club a few weeks ago to improve my presentation skills. This is my first talk. And, to be honest, I don’t have a damn clue what I’m going to talk about right now, because I’m totally unprepared. What would you like to hear?”

“Go home, idiot!” shouted someone from the imaginary audience.

“Alright, this is not going well. I really need a topic,” Johnny thought. “Why do I have to leave everything to the last minute? Everything is so much easier if I do things on time, giving myself enough time to prepare and practise… Wait a minute. This could be a good topic! Time management. Something I already know a thing or two about.”

Johnny peeked at his watch. 16 minutes left. Someone honked at him on the road. His bicycle was fast, but 15mph was unbearable for some drivers. The car impatiently accelerated, overtook him, honked again, then suddenly stopped at the red light.

“Such an arse! Alright I should take some notes before I forget. What was it? Time management. Being late. Being unprepared. Green. Let’s go!”

The traffic started moving, and Johnny was on stage again.

“Hello, I’m Johnny. I want to talk about time management. What an interesting term! Managing time. Do we manage time? Is time something that can actually be managed? To find this out, let’s break it down into the words ‘time’ and ‘management’. What is time? … ”

“There we go, I’m about to give an unprepared, improvised, abstract, philosophical talk, dissecting time on stage. What a wonderful idea! You idiot.”

13 minutes left.

“But this is interesting, and it might work. What is time? Is time a thing? Well, what are things? A tree is a thing. Cats are things too. And thoughts. We can say that a thought is a thing, right? Hm, not sure. Thoughts are not tangible. But they are still something. Some thing. Hm. Thoughts are probably things. So what is a thing? Something. Everything. This doesn’t help.”

The traffic was gone, and Johnny was cycling through calm streets now, amongst rows of colourful Victorian buildings, and large trees. He felt the wind on his face. Green leaves were dancing on the trees. Somewhere a blackbird was singing. A group of children were walking along the pavement, chatting, probably just out of school. “What a contrast!” thought Johnny. 10 minutes left.

“So, hello, I’m Johnny, blah blah blah, I will talk about time. What is time? Stuff happens in time. Like riding a bicycle. Talking. The wind blowing in my face. Hearing a bird singing. These are happenings. Things that have movement. Verbs.”

“Hm, that’s good. Verbs! Verbs move. Nouns stay.”

“Verbs indicate something that happens in time. In contrast, nouns are static. For example, the word ‘bicycle’ is timeless. ‘Riding’ the bicycle needs time, because the legs are pumping, the wheels are spinning, and the bike is moving from A to B. Usually, when something happens, something changes. Change requires time. Nouns live in an eternal, static space, where nothing ever happens. Hm, it’s interesting I said they live. ‘Live’ is a verb. Hm… Let’s not go down that road now!”

Lots of cars on the road again. 7 minutes and 2 miles left. “I wish I could stop time for only a few hours! I could really use that extra time.” Johnny thought. “Would that be possible somehow?”

“Hello, I’m Johnny, and I’m fucking late, and I am a moron. I had two weeks to prepare for this talk.”

“So, time is about change. And time is also our perception of change. Or is it? Hm. Okay, Johnny, think! Red light… oh ffffff… aargh!!”

“Verbs happen in time. Like eating, running, freezing and loving. But what is the most basic verb? The verb of all verbs, the root of all? It is…”

“TO BE…”

“The verb ‘be’ is the mother of all verbs. The tree is there. There is a tree. The tree ‘is’. The tree ‘exists’. Existence is something that happens to the tree. That’s amazing… Being needs time! Being happens in time, so anything, in order to exist, requires time.”

“I am.”

”I exist.”

“I exist in time.”

“Time is essential for anything to exist. Nothing exists without time.”

“Let’s turn this around! Is there time without being?”

“Is there time? Does time exist? If there ‘is’ time, it ‘exists’. Time exists, and in order to exist it needs time. Oookay… Does this mean that time and being are the same thing? Ha! Let’s see the words again. ‘Be’ is a verb, and it means that something ‘is’, or I ‘am’, indicating that I am present in the world. ‘Being’ is the noun form of the ‘be’ verb, meaning ‘the existence of something’. What about time? ‘Time’ is a noun, and we’ve established that it has something to do with happening, change, and being. I can talk about my time on Earth – in this case I would talk about my existence, my being here. Sometimes we say ‘time passes’, meaning ‘being carries on’, or ‘progresses’. And we can ask ‘what time is it’ when we want to know where we are in the progression of existence.”

“It really seems that when we think about time and being, we are thinking about the same thing: existence. Time is being, and being is time.”

“Hello, my name is Johnny. I am, I exist, but I won’t make it. I have only two minutes left, and I don’t have any structure or notes for this talk. Only some loose thoughts. I wish I could stop time now! I am so late! I’ll look like an ass. I am going to die of embarrassment on that stage. Five minutes is going to feel like an eternity.”

He pedalled as fast as he could. The bike sliced through the air. A red sports car growled to life at the kerb ahead. Then, with one hard burst, its nose cut into the lane.

“NONONONONO!!”

The car’s brake lights flared, but it was too late.

CRASH!

Johnny was flying.

The world had gone silent. It was an impossibly long second. He saw the clouds reflected in the hood of the car. He could feel the air on his left cheek. His thoughts about the talk were gone. There was no future and no past. Only this intense, boundless, crystal-clear moment. His body, the bicycle, the car, the city, the clouds – it was all one continuous happening. He was this happening. He was pure being. He was time itself. He felt like God, moving this human body through the world.

“AIKIDO ROLL” his mind said from nowhere. He hadn’t performed the technique since he was twelve, but now he knew exactly what to do. “I’m going to hit the cobblestones there. The lady in the purple jacket is about to enter my trajectory, so I need to adjust.” He waited for a tiny fraction of a second, and when he reached the edge of the hood, he pushed himself away to the left. Then he stretched his right hand forward, met the pavement, and let the force travel through his arm, shoulder, and back, carrying him through the roll and onto his feet.

People stood frozen with shock. Then some of them started clapping.

“You all right, mate?” the driver shouted.

God heard him, but didn’t reply. He lifted Johnny’s hand and checked the time. The talk was supposed to start now.

He looked around calmly. There was a small gathering around his avatar. Someone was bringing a wreck toward him – his bike. On the road, a traffic jam had formed. A horn was honking somewhere, but the tone and texture sounded very interesting. He could hear the engines of the cars and the chatter of people, each individual sound stream separately, all at the same time. A seagull landed on a rooftop. Everything was vivid and clear. Everything was just fine.

Then, with absolute confidence, he stepped forward, looked up at the sky, raised his arms, inhaled deeply, and shouted:

“I”

“WANT”

“TIME”

“TO STOP”

“NOW”

.