Isabel+A's+OpEd+Article

media type="file" key="isabellea-muckraker-2011.mp3"
 * “Tick. Tock. That’s the sound of your life running out.” **

It’s an inanimate object consisting of intrinsic mechanisms and miniscule wheels and screws, yet it has the ultimate power to lock shackles onto our lives. Everything we do is timed. Tick tock, tick tock. Are you ready?

Every morning and every evening, you are Time’s prisoner. There it is at 6:30am to force you to peel your eyes open at the sound of the alarm clock. And there it is at 11:00pm to provoke you to seal your eyes from beneath your blankets. Time is forever in control; we are all its mere puppets.

The clock strikes again, and again. Everyday it holds us captive as it demands action. But I’ve had enough of its stressful intentions. How long will you let it control you?

Our desires to be free from the shackles of Time are unfortunately in vain. We are at a dead end in escaping the demands of Time for the reason of dependence. Chaos would ignite if Time were to vanish; organization would be a joke.

But our unfortunate dependence doesn’t have to include a full sacrifice. We can follow the path of actions that Time pressures us to pursue, but we could also choose not to. We can choose to smack the snooze button a few times in the morning or stay awake all night. Just as Time has the power to control, we have the power to boycott its temptations.

Now I’m not saying that we should all be late to school everyday to show our pride against the demands of time. And I’m not insisting that we should all become insomniacs in order to prove our ability to boycott.

All I strive to offer is an idea, to live a little fuller and to make any moment timeless whenever an opportunity arises. Sleep with peace, wake up with optimism. We live under the hands of clocks and our lifetime essentially shortens after every nightfall and sunrise, so why let the stress of Time control our lives? If we can’t completely disengage ourselves from the pressures of Time, let’s make the time that we have enjoyable.