700 Common Words Exercise No. 14
You would therefore make the statement that a certain
sound took place at, say, five seconds past the hour, I would say that it
happened at about two or three seconds past the hour, while the people at the
works would say that it took place just at the hour. So that when we say that a
certain thing happened at a certain time we really mean that it happened at
that time in relation to our own position at that moment. The relation of time
to distance and the relation of immediate time to time as a whole are subjects
in which people grow more and more interested. Two interesting plays have been
written round the idea that everything that has happened in the past is still
in existence, the point made by the plays being that a person who has a certain
special sense highly developed can go back into the past and experience old and
past events. But interesting as these ideas may be, there is another and much
more usual point of view from which to consider time. For all the general
purposes of everyday life we all understand time quite well. We know that each
day is made up of 24 hours, that there are never 23 hours to the day and never
25. We know that little hands marking the passing of the minutes and hours move
on and on at their even rate, and that although they work in our service they
work without any regard to our personal and special interests. They will work
no more quickly when life is taking us towards. Some specially pleasing event,
and they will not lessen their rate when we are moving towards something less
passing. We know that time influences us in the doing of every piece of work,
for all work, to have its highest value, has to be done to time. The Chief who
calls the members of the Board together for a certain time must be ready when
the Board meets with the facts, figures, or questions which he wishes to put to
the members. He depends not only upon his own work in this connection but upon
the work of all directly working with him, from the most experienced man in his
employ to the most recent of the office boys. The motor manufacturer must so
organize the year’s work of all his men that he not only supplies the day to
day demand of the public for his product but also has his new goods quite ready
for the market at the expected time. The manufacturer, whatever his product may
be, must supply present demand and at the same time organize future work. Goods
made for shipment overseas must be ready for shipment by the date on which the
ship is leaving the country. The kind of market in which we are interested
makes little difference goods must be put on the market when the market is
ready to receive them. But the principal difficulty of all planning comes from
the fact that we cannot see time. We have perhaps five months in which to do a
piece of work; there seems to be no need for an immediate start and the papers
in connection with it are put on one side. When the papers again see the light
of day we find, possibly, that we need information from another person. But to
the second man this piece of work is something just received, and he in his
turn sits on it for a little while, only to find when he looks seriously at the
work that it requires the attention of a third party. And valuable days pass
until we find that the work is either put through to time as a result of much
work and running about on the part of everyone interested or it is not put
through with resulting loss of money and goodwill. Even when man has done his
best Nature sometimes lets us down, and weather conditions hold up trains,
planes and ships, and the perfect piece of planning works out less perfectly
than we had hoped expected.
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