Timing is an interesting subject. From the regular beat of my heart to the daily light and dark to the annual passages through the equinoxes and back, we have many rhythms going on in our bodies and our lives.
When I first heard of The Wonderful One Horse Shay by Oliver Wendell Holmes, I paid no attention. Over the years, references to the poem kept popping up. Finally (still without actually reading the poem), I gathered that the carriage had difficulty, we might say, wearing out. The deacon who built it had been meticulous in building it so that there was no weakest point, no place for break-down to start. It lasted wonderfully long but like everything, it did age and eventually wore out, collapsing all at once.
So what? Isn't good engineering and careful workmanship to be desired? Don't we teach the young to strive to do an excellent job? Yes and yes, but such a strategy can make slow and steady replacement and repair impossible. On the day, 100 years later, when the bill came due, the entire vehicle turned to a heap of junk, all at once.
Simultaneity is different from one step at a time. This is quite apparent when our refrigerator, our stove, our patio door and other important parts of our house and goods fail together. We paid for them one at a time but unless we want to sacrifice (horrors!!) and do without something we are used to having (horrors!!), we pile up several hefty deductions in our savings. It is a bit refreshing really, to be reminded that the world goes along, that we and all we know are part of the processes of existence, slowly changing into something else, often a simple pile of odds and ends. But our wallets, account balances and our minds get a little shaken up by it all.
