The Hourglass

Somewhere along a narrow street stands a studio, old enough to forget the city’s name.

Countless canvases against the walls. Brushes resting in jars. A low lamp flickers against the dark. In the corner, a table. On the table, an hourglass.

Unnoticed for years, it waits, buried between scrolls and half-finished sketches. But today it will be noticed as the artist sets down his favourite brush. It will be held for a moment, then put back. Turned.

The sand begins to fall. The way it has fallen for centuries. At its own pace. Indifferent to the clock on the wall and the city still asleep outside. The sound, barely a whisper against glass.

The artist has not noticed time in weeks. Today, he will witness it.

***

The hourglass has no single inventor or confirmed origin.

It surfaced in medieval Europe, likely between the 8th and 14th centuries, built to solve a practical problem. Water clocks froze, evaporated, failed at sea. Sand flowed consistently, travelled well, and kept its accuracy in any climate.

For centuries it served the living. Sailors marked watches. Monks timed prayer. Churches placed hourglasses beside pulpits so sermons would not run long. It measured duration. It made time useful.

Then artists got hold of it. By the Renaissance, the hourglass appeared in vanitas paintings beside skulls, extinguished candles, and wilted flowers. Memento mori. A winged hourglass became shorthand for tempus fugit. Time flies. It stopped measuring time. It started measuring mortality.

But what compels me about the hourglass is not what the sailor measured or the artist mourned.

***

Lived time is irreversible.

We accumulate experience, memory, consequence. We do not get the conversation back. We do not undo the decision that changed everything. We do not get to talk to someone who is gone. Life falls in a single direction.

Not the hourglass. With a flip, what was past becomes potential. The cycle starts anew.

We draw lines across our lives and call them the same thing. A new year. A new city. A relationship ended, a career changed, a version of ourselves declared finished. We flip. The sand begins to fall.

Reinvention is the most seductive idea a person can hold. That the old patterns, broken commitments, and inherited limitations can remain in the lower chamber while something new rises clean above.

But the sand that returns to the top is not new sand. It carries the residue of every previous fall. Microscopic wear. Friction against glass. Grains chipped against each other in the throat. The object ages with each cycle.

Time cannot be unmade.

***

The sand continues to fall.

A smooth, continuous stream through the narrow centre. Connected. Unbroken. It appears to flow the way identity feels. A single line from who you were to who you are becoming.

It is not smooth. When the upper chamber is full, there is no urgency. Time feels endless because the supply looks endless. As the sand thins, falling feels faster. What has passed, once ignorable, now carries weight. The centre, once invisible, becomes the only thing worth watching.

It is not continuous. The stream is individual grains. Separate. Discrete. Each one a moment that will not return. What looks like flow is accumulation happening faster than the eye can separate.

We slow down at the beginning. We speed up as we approach the end. One moment passes through us at a time, but no two moments feel the same.

This wisdom lives beyond the hourglass.

***

In a studio where time is ruled by motion, the hourglass rests. The city wakes. The artist sleeps. Most of the sand has gathered at the bottom. Any minute now the last grain will fall. Such is the contract.

But here is the gift. No grain, not even the last one, skips the threshold.

Here, everything transforms into what it will be. A lifetime compressed to fit into now. And for one unrepeatable moment, each grain is allowed its turn. Neither awaiting nor settled. Neither starting nor done.

From all the moments in a life, this one carries the most power. For it is the wisdom of all it was, the agency of what it is, and the potential of all it could become.

On temporal self-continuity. The Thread explored the narrative we construct between selves. The Hourglass explores the threshold where all selves meet.

^{This publication is a space for exploration and reflection. Nothing in this email is medical, psychological, or therapeutic advice. These ideas are general insights on human behaviour, not treatment or diagnosis. Each reader’s situation is unique and deserves the right kind of support. If you are struggling or in crisis, please contact a licensed mental health professional.}