When I first set my watch to 24-hour time, army time, I couldn’t make sense of it.
13:53?
That means 1:53 PM, right? It got worse as the time moved further away from noon.
17:42?
Quick! What’s 17 minus 12?
The whole point of telling time is to quickly get a bearing on where you’re at in the day. If you have to think much about it, you end up losing time. And you end up frustrated. When I switched to 24-hour time, it felt like arithmetic, not time.
But that was a long time ago now. Now I have the hang of it.
21:04.
I don’t have to translate that to 9:04 PM anymore. I just know what 21:04 means.
That’s what balance is. That’s what it means when someone says you’re in your element. That’s what’s happening when you’re doing something but can’t explain how.
It’s when you stop translating.
