Smiles timed between clock ticks and camera clicks

By vinodnarayan on September 27, 2013 • ( 0 )

A few months back on a picture of my son that I posted on Facebook a friend of mine asked “Why do only children smile genuinely?” And at that time I replied saying “Probably because they don’t keep worrying about what they don’t have, can enjoy a moment and are often devoid of any fear.”

But when I thought more about it I had one reason to say… Time…. Not Time per say.. but time as we know and calculate it and identify ourselves with it. So I looked the clock, one of the biggest inventions by man…

From the ancient sundial systems ‘Timekeeping’ had traveled across thousands of years to reach its current sexagesimal system and clocks. If you think about the man who lived as the hunter gatherer relying only on Sunrise and sunset he only had two times to keep. To wake up before sunrise and get on with his day and make sure he reaches a safe abode as the sun sets and it gets dark.

From then to today we have created timekeeping machines with the strong belief that we have been able to control time. But is that really true? How many of us live our life controlled by the clock to the hour, minute and even the second. It is practically impossible to live without being controlled by it….

Kids when they are very young they have a different definition of time which is defined by hunger. Then they graduate that when they get potty trained and know that they have to hold on to things because the time is not yet right. They learn to wait and they also learn to speed through something….

Even at age 5 you are not able to read the time from a clock and when you start learning that you also start seeing that your life gets locked to the big and small needles in a clock move. This could be a big change for the kids for I don’t remember how it was for me when I first learned to read the time….

So can we say that when we become driven by the clock we lose the genuineness of a smile? When we see that we are getting older, that our tasks are not getting done, and that we have wasted time and so on.

When we stand in front of a camera and smile we are worried about when the photographer is about to click. We are worried if he can capture the right moment when we can fake that most genuine looking smile. Then we get bored and distracted when the click does not happen. No wonder that the best photographs of adults are taken when they are not posing for it…When they are devoid of the thought of time lapsing second by second… click by click…..

Kids can smile because they are in no rush, for them the dimension of time is still shaping and consequences of time lapsing is an unnatural event for them I guess
Smile….