I Think the Clock Is Broken

Sixteen years. Sixteen years of sitting in meditation, and I still think the clock is broken.

I set the timer, whichever little ticking tool that I use to guide my practice. I sit down, settle in, close my eyes, get still, and inevitably, at some point, a thought barges in: “The timer must be broken,” or “the clock must have died,” or “did I forget to set the alarm, there’s no way it hasn’t been thirty minutes already.” I’ve heard that voice hundreds of times. Maybe thousands. And every once in a while, even though I know I set the timer right, I break, I give in and crack an eye open to check, only to see the seconds slipping by exactly as they should. Then, just moments after I close my eyes again, the alarm rings—right on time.

But why? After all these years of practice, why does the thought of sitting still without a specific end make me so uncomfortable? Am I afraid I might never get up? Am I afraid I will miss some life if the alarm doesn’t ring? Is this time anxiety, or simply general anxiety anxiety?

When I first started sitting, two minutes felt like an eternity. I couldn’t sit still. I’d fidget, I’d shift, I’d itch for distraction. Anything to keep me from facing the moment. Then, two was quite simple, so I pushed the timer to five minutes. Again, five was easy and also not long enough, I craved more, so I pushed the time to ten. Slowly, I built up my endurance. The discomfort at each wall kept softening. Now, on my best days, I can sit for an hour. But the doubt and the impulse to check the clock, it’s still there, just below the surface, waiting for the perfect moment to pull me away from the moment.

This isn’t just about checking the timer. It’s about something deeper. It’s about control. It’s about the mind’s relentless need to feel in charge, to know what’s coming, to anticipate the next move. It’s about my fear of letting go, of sitting longer than planned, of not knowing when things will end.

There’s a Buddhist story about a group of monks who would sit for meditation every morning and evening, guided by the sound of a bell. One day, the bell broke, but the teacher didn’t tell them. So the monks sat, and they sat, and they sat waiting for the bell to ring. Minutes passed. Then hours. Days. Still no bell. Some monks became anxious, others frustrated, some angry, and some sat in peace. After several days, the teacher explained that the bell was never the point. The point was to let go of the idea that meditation begins or ends at a certain time.

I think about that story often. The bell—the timer—it’s not the point. The clock isn’t the practice. But I still get stuck in that mindset: If the bell doesn’t ring, did the session even happen?

And that’s the crux of the issue. The clock, in a way, represents everything we’re trained to believe about time. We live in a world where time is currency. Time is something to be spent, saved, invested, and maximized. Every minute is a potential for profit, or worse, a potential for loss. This isn’t just how we think about work; it’s how we think about our lives. We’re taught to fill every moment with productivity, back to back, to chase the next task, the next goal, the next achievement. We measure our worth by how well we use our time, by how much we can do in a day. It’s a cycle that feeds itself. If I’m not doing something, am I wasting time? If I’m not maximizing my minutes, am I losing my value?

We’re so concerned with how much time has passed or how much time is left that we forget to actually live in the time we have.

This mindset follows us into everything we do. It’s in the way we plan our days, the way we relate to our phones, the way we structure our lives. And it slips into my sitting practice too. When I sit, I’m often not just sitting. I’m timing myself. I’m measuring my progress. I’m setting a clock. I’m treating it like a task with a start and end time; thirty minutes, forty… The moment I check the clock, I’ve stepped into the realm of measurement and control. 

This view of time turns meditation—something that should be about being into doing—into a task. A box to check. A goal to reach. Sit for thirty minutes, check. On to the next thing. Meditation becomes just another item on the to-do list, a thing to get done so I can feel good about my day. It stops being a practice and starts being another chore.

But isn’t the point of the cushion to be able to get off the cushion? I might be able to hit one thousand free throws in a row, but if I can’t do it in a game-time situation, what’s the point? When my mother-in-law is in town, or when I get cut off in traffic—that’s when I need my practice. When the sink is full of dishes. What’s the point of sitting for an hour if I can’t forgive my partner for finishing all the almond milk? 

The Buddha talks about how suffering arises from our attachment to impermanent things. Time, like everything else, is impermanent. But in a culture that’s so obsessed with productivity and achievement, we’ve made time into a commodity—something to possess, something to control. And the more we try to control it, the more it controls us. My therapist tells me that anxiety is harping on the future and depression is harping on the past. “It’s always gonna be hard,” he says, “when we grasp for a time that isn’t this one.”

There’s another story from the Zen tradition I love about a man who was given a priceless jewel by his teacher. He carried it with him everywhere, but he was always worried about losing it. He would check his pockets constantly, making sure it was still there. The fear of losing the jewel became so overwhelming that he couldn’t enjoy anything. Eventually, he returned the jewel to his teacher, realizing that the worry of losing it was worse than not having it at all.

Or the real-world, right-now version of this: My buddy bought a very nice brand-new car. He loved this car, obsessed about it, over it, so much so that he couldn’t sleep at night because he was worried something would happen to it. One sleepless night, he couldn’t take it anymore, so he went outside in his underwear and kicked the car as hard as he could and went inside and passed out. He stopped worrying about a time and a thing that didn’t exist, he gave up looking to see if “the clock” worked or didn’t work, and he arrived. 

That jewel is like my buddy’s car, is like time, is like anything we can’t let go of. We hold on so tightly, afraid of wasting it, or losing it, afraid of not using it well, afraid of its slipping away, afraid, afraid… And in that tight grasp, we lose the ability to truly experience it. To rest in it. We’re so concerned with how much time has passed or how much time is left that we forget to actually live in the time we have. When I put the clock first in my meditation practice, I’m seeing if I’ve measured up to some internal standard of success. Did I sit long enough? Did I achieve something? And in doing so, I miss the point entirely. Meditation isn’t about achieving something. It’s about letting go of many things. It’s about arriving over and over again. Meeting the moment in the only moment where there is breath, now. 

The timer doesn’t matter. What matters is the practice itself, one not constrained to a clock, or a certain room. The practice can come anywhere with us, is everywhere with us, and is not bound by time. What matters is the willingness to face the discomfort, to watch the thoughts, to feel the fidgeting, the need to measure, to control, to achieve, and to stay with it. 

What matters is letting go of the heavy whisper of more, more, more. 

In a world that tells us we should always be doing more, sitting still can be an act of rebellion, the ultimate rejection of a culture that tells us our value is tied to our productivity.

So I sit. I breathe. I remind myself: The clock is fine. And even if it’s not, that’s fine too. I have arrived.