Firstly, wishing all the watchfam a Happy New Year, I hope twenty twenty three brings you all you want and need. Make the best of it.
You can change or stay the same, buy your favourite watch with different colour dial, or buy a watch that you never thought you would. There are no rules to this thing. You can make the best or worst of it, I hope you make the best of it, and apply undue pressure to someone else to also buy at least one watch they don't need. I hope you feel things you've never felt before, like an knurled crown or a fluted bezel. If you make a mistake, don't get a refund, get store credit so you definitely spend the money on another watch. I hope you have the strength to wear a watch you like, even if it isn't made in Switzerland. I hope you are proud of your decisions, unless you decide to buy a Rolex, AP or Patek. If you spend all your money on watches and go bankrupt, I hope you have the courage to start all over again. For what it's worth, it's all worth it.
That was the feelings part, here comes the science bit.
Human beings, like all creatures, are inextricably linked to the passage of time. Our circadian rhythms help us rise and sleep in time with the sun, while hormones control other biological rhythms such as heart rate, appetite, and impulse buying cycles. However, the conscious experience of time - that is, the ability to recall past events and predict future ones - is unique to humans who wear watches.
One of our oldest and most useful technologies is the ability to understand time, it would be entirely impossible without watches. Understanding the link between the past and the present enabled our forefathers to comprehend crucial cause and effect linkages, such as the link between Seiko and a healthy bank balance (not including Grand Seiko).
Understanding the cyclical pattern of the seasons also helped humans predict the optimal times to sow seeds, harvest crops, and enslave people, all of which were critical in the development of agriculture. It also helps us create bots so to allow us to snag the latest limited edition release.
The amount of work we've put into quantifying time demonstrates how crucial it is. Throughout history, humanity has strived to create increasingly accurate timepieces - culminating in the quartz crisis. Humans constructed ivory tablets inscribed with precise records of the moon cycle as early as 38,000 years ago. Later, the Romans improved the use of sundials to split days into hours. By the fourteenth century, European towns had gigantic mechanical clocks to keep everyone on time. Later still, the moonphase sub-dial would feature on many watches, allowing hundreds if not thousands of people to show their friends and family that the dial on their watch looked like the moon in the sky.
The ability to objectively measure time altered every aspect of human life. Accurate clocks allowed ships to traverse the oceans more easily, paved the way for physics experiments, and allowed manufacturers to arrange people based on hourly labour (pros and cons). In other words, time is a tool that has shaped both our intellectual and material aspirations. It has manifest in modern times and brought us great joy, desire and tears, after spending three months wages on a "limited edition" watch that was re-released the very next year.
Our future route is unknown, but the concept of time will always be with us. The incredible cognitive breakthrough that changed the trajectory of our entire species, manifests in modern life, most importantly on our wrists. In a majestic mark of respect we spend torturous hours and days on eBay and Chrono24 looking for instruments of time, through which we connect to those early pioneers of time and random blokes on the internet.
We know what watches are, they are time. Without it/them, we couldn't move forwards, or onwards and upwards as we do. We will always be better with a timekeeper on our wrists, ticking away in sync with our hearts.
Times are tough for many, my thoughts are often with them. I have belief that good in this world will prevail, but these things take...hard work and, so, let's take it a year at a time.
Thanks again for your support, taking the time and sharing my journey.
With timely regards,
Alvin
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