Meandering Along

“Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie.
Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”

– Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper

Interest

never sleeps nor sickens nor dies;
it never goes to the hospital;
it works on Sundays and holidays;
it never takes a vacation;
it never visits nor travels;
it takes no pleasure;
it is never laid off work nor discharged from employment;
it never works on reduced hours;
it never has short crops nor droughts;
it never pays taxes;
it buys no food;
it wears no clothes;
it is unhoused and without home and so has no repairs, no replacements, no shingling, plumbing, painting, or whitewashing;
it has neither wife, children, father, mother, nor kinfolk to watch over and care for; it has no expense of living;
it has neither weddings nor births nor deaths; it has no love, no sympathy; it is as hard and soulless as a granite cliff. Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night;
you cannot shun it or slip away from it;
you cannot dismiss it;
it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders;
and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.

(in Conference Report, Apr., 1938, p. 103.)
J. Reuben Clark