84. The Time Keeper
Rating: ☆☆☆
Recommended by:
Author: Mitch Albom
Genre: Fiction
224 pages, published September 4, 2012
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
The inventor of the world’s first clock is punished for trying to measure God’s greatest gift. He is banished to a cave for centuries and forced to listen to the voices of all who come after him seeking more days, more years. Eventually, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is granted his freedom, along with a magical hourglass and a mission: a chance to redeem himself by teaching two earthly people the true meaning of time. He returns to our world which is now dominated by the hour-counting he so innocently began. He follows the journeys on two people, a teenage girl who is about to give up on life and a wealthy old businessman who wants to live forever. To save himself, the Timekeeper must save them both.
Quotes
“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.”
“We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.”
“There is a reason God limits our days.’ ‘Why?’ To make each one precious.”
“Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time. When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”
“As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart. People fretted over missed chances, over inefficient days; they worried constantly about how long they would live, because counting life’s moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down. Soon, in every nation and in every language, time became the most precious commodity.”
“There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between summers was gone.”
“When we are most alone is when we embrace another’s loneliness.”
“With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have.”
“We do not realize the sound the world makes — unless, of course, it comes to a stop. Then, when it starts, it sounds like an orchestra.”
“She had been so consumed with escaping her own misery, she hadn’t considered the misery she might inflict.”
“This time was different. The tools of this era–phones, computers–enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all they accomplished, they were never at peace.”
My Take
There are some interesting ideas in Mitch Albom’s The Time Keeper that made me think about my approach to time. While I am usually concerned about being productive, I’m always happier when I make time to appreciate all of the many blessings in my life and in this world. I’m even happier when I concretely express appreciation for these blessings. While the story in The Time Keeper is not particularly compelling, the ideas it contains, especially the idea that we should take a step back from our fast paced world to smell the roses, makes the book a decent read.
