Page 4 - Beyond COVID-19

Time to take your time

hink of a thing that you and Bill Gates word “Kairos” when referring to the con- outbreak. It reminds readers to enjoy the
Thave in common each day. There are cept of qualitative time. However, Japanese presence, instead of saving time for the
so many possible answers, but one answer nowadays tend to treat time as something future. It says your minds will be peaceful by
might be “time”. We all have the same 24 quantitative and focus on saving time for doing so.
hours a day. Then, what is time? Is it some- the future. According to a survey conducted Momo has become a best seller probably
thing that can only be measured by clocks? by SEIKO in April 2020, almost 61 per cent because the pandemic has given many peo-
of the people reported being pressed for ple a chance to slow down and spend more
As you may have experienced, time flies time, while about 70 per cent of the people time at home. By reflecting on themselves,
when you are feeling pleased or excited. said they strongly believed that time should some may have realized that they have been
Time flies when you watch your favorite film be spent efficiently. These data shows that too anxious. It may be high time to take your
and it passes slowly when you have a boring many people are obsessed with the proverb time and enjoy every moment in your life.
class. In this context, time is kept not by “time is money” and are like slaves to time.
clocks but by your mindsets.
Ironically, Momo, a book which tells the
Indeed, time can be both quantitative importance of spending quality time, has By Youngah Kim
and qualitative. Ancient Greeks used the become popular in Japan during COVID-19

Youngah Kim from University of Tokyo talked about how COVID-19 encouraged people to
reflect on time managment.

Free Time, the mother of great ideas

efore COVID-19 outbreak, a Japanese college student, who would like to be named as
BAkiko Suzuki, used to go to bed at midnight and wake up at 6:30 a.m.. Now, she wakes
up at 8:15 a.m., 15 minutes before her first class begins. “
Most students take online classes during the pandemic, and time previously spent on get- I hope we make the
ting dressed and commuting has been saved, giving them more free time to relax. best out of the pan-
Some research shows that we tend to come up with good ideas on such occasions. Our demic, using our
brains activate its “default mode network” when we are enjoying a peace of mind. It is pre-
sumed that this network enables us to think of good ideas by connecting scattered pieces of time wisely to let
unconscious memory in our brains.
our ideas flow and
Let me share the story of Isaac Newton as an example. When the Great Plague of London
hit, he was forced to leave his school, Trinity College, Cambridge, and return to his home in look at the world
Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, 60 miles northwest of Cambridge. The famous anecdote tells
that when he saw an apple falling from a tree to the ground, he conceived the basic idea of from a new
the law of universal gravitation.
perspective.
I am not saying that just sitting under a tree will make you become another Newton.
Surely, he made efforts. His endeavor bore fruit probably because he had a lot of free time at
home and it helped spark new ideas.

Although we may not enjoy as much free time as Newton did since many students continue
their studies online, we certainly have gained extra free time during the pandemic and new
thoughts may come into our minds as well. I hope we make the best out of the pandemic,
using our time wisely to let our ideas flow and look at the world from a new perspective.
By Youngah Kim