Do things go wrong to teach us right?

Ela clear-sighted in the Yesterday Jacket and the Encore Dress... (photo: Timo Jarvinen)

There is this one thing running particularly wrong in my life. Or to be more exact, it runs wrong about every other day. One could even claim that the only thing right and reliable about it is that it practically does run wrong every other day. It’s not a lot, but it is something, and probably what we have to be satisfied with in time of financial crisis and swine flu…

Well, this thing is also known as a public clock at which I bike by every day to University. A public clock running wrong might be a low-key affair in other countries, but it is kind of a big deal in Switzerland. I mean, it’s Switzerland, the country that pretty much invented the tick and the tack that make clocks all around the world go. Time and punctuality is technically paragraphed in the Swiss constitution. Swiss mums feed their babies with it. And Swiss teachers, bosses or any other person in authority have a legal right to put a headlock on anyone that doesn’t fully meet the requirements of time and punctuality… In short, Swiss clocks do simply not just run wrong. And if they still do, they mess up Swiss people’s life like this particular one messed up mine.

As there was a time in this clock’s life when the hands were according to their big boss in Greenwich, England, I almost fell off my bike the first time they weren’t. The clock ran about 30 minutes fast, which would have meant a 30 minutes delay for class for me, which again made me almost experience a minor heart attack. Such a reaction on being late might sound rather ‘petit bourgeois’ in your ears, but considering the Swiss breakfast and punishing standards it should no longer be surprising… So blame it on my education, but I knew no other option than to declare war on this piece of public nuisance.

Up from then, I punished the clock with my cold shoulder, and I was almost overconfident of my victory a few days later (the clock slowly but surely began to be on time more often), when the clock’s final attack eventually forced me to my knees. It happened to run wrong on a day on which things in my life weren’t running quite right either, and that was what made the scales suddenly fell from my eyes… What if this clock ran wrong to teach me something? What if it had a message for me? Yes, what if this ugly and wrong running piece was nothing but the faster ticking reflection of my life and only ran wrong to teach me that things in my life did just as its fingers? Maybe run wrong on some days but still run right the next?

Well, not that things were really all that simple in life, but how much easier are wrong running times to stand when we know that we just have to be patient for a day or two until they would be right again? So even if this clock is nothing more than what it really is (namely a simple, ugly and wrong running piece) it at least had the power to remind me illustratively that declaring war on wrong running things is a simple waste of time (especially in a clock’s case…). Sometimes things obviously have to go wrong to teach us right.

Now go find your own wrong running clock and appreciate it!

Ela