The Artillery Clock: What Living Near a Range Taught Me About Time
Living near an artillery range changes your relationship with time forever. Each explosion isn't just noise—it's a heartbeat of existence, a physical reminder that another moment has just passed and will never return. It's a unique chronometer that measures life not in silent seconds, but in reverberating booms that shake your windows and resonate in your chest.
At first, these explosions were my enemies. They interrupted thoughts, shattered concentration, and disturbed any semblance of peace. But over time, they became something else entirely: teachers of one of life's most crucial lessons.
The Physical Reality of Time
We live in a world where time has become abstract—numbers changing on screens, calendar notifications, digital reminders. But there's something profoundly different about feeling time's passage through your entire body. When each moment arrives with a force that makes your bones vibrate, you can't maintain the comfortable illusion that time is an infinite resource.
The artillery range strips away our modern cushioning from time's reality. Each boom asks a simple question: What did you do with that moment? Did you use it to move forward, to build, to grow? Or did you let another precious block of time slip away into the void?
Every explosion becomes an audit of your commitment:
Did you protect what needed protecting?
Did you build what needed building?
Did you teach what needed teaching?
Did you act when action was needed?
The artillery doesn't care about your excuses. It doesn't pause because you need more time. It just keeps marking the passages, keeps counting down the moments, keeps reminding you that time is the one resource you can never mine more of.
This isn't about living in fear or constant stress. It's about living with acute awareness. When you can physically feel time's passage, you start making different choices. The transformation happens in stages, each boom pushing you further along the path from passive observer to active participant in your own life.
First comes the awakening—the moment you realize that time isn't just passing, it's passing through you. Each explosion forces you to acknowledge another moment gone, another opportunity either seized or lost. This awareness begins to seep into your decision-making process, creating a new sense of urgency that's not about panic, but about presence.
Then comes the shift in how you approach possibilities. When time becomes tangible, you stop treating ideas as distant dreams to be pursued "eventually." Instead, they become immediate candidates for action. Plans become actions because you understand that planning without execution is just another form of procrastination. Ideas become projects because you realize that an unrealized idea is just a ghost of what could have been. Intentions become commitments because you know that good intentions without action are worthless in the face of time's relentless march.
The most profound transformation happens in your relationship with "now." When each boom reminds you that time is finite, "someday" loses its power as a placeholder for dreams. The perfect moment reveals itself as the illusion it always was. You begin to understand that "now" isn't just a time—it's the only time you can actually use.
The most dangerous illusion in our modern world is the idea that there will always be more time—that we can wait for the perfect moment, the right conditions, the ideal circumstances. The artillery strips away this comfort. It makes time's passage unavoidable, undeniable, impossible to ignore. But more than that, it teaches you to use time rather than just watch it pass.
This new relationship with time manifests in practical changes:
You stop waiting for inspiration and start creating conditions for action
You reduce deliberation time not by rushing, but by making decisions with the understanding that perfect information is rarely available
You learn to distinguish between necessary preparation and unnecessary delay
You develop a bias toward action that's tempered by wisdom rather than paralyzed by fear
The shift from awareness to action isn't a single moment—it's a continuous process of aligning your behaviors with your understanding of time's value. Each boom becomes not just a reminder, but a call to action, a moment of decision, a chance to move from knowing to doing.
What the artillery taught me wasn't about rushing. It was about removing the illusion that time is an infinite resource. Each explosion drove home the same lesson: Time will pass anyway. The only question is what you do with the time between the booms.
This understanding changes everything. When you truly internalize time's relentless forward motion, you stop waiting for permission. You stop looking for the perfect moment. You realize that the next boom is coming whether you're ready or not.
While most of us don't live near artillery ranges, we all have our own versions of these booms—deadlines, heartbeats, sunrise and sunset, the endless scroll of news and social media. The key is to find your own artillery clock, your own physical reminder of time's passage.
Because ultimately, that's what the artillery range teaches: Each moment that passes is gone forever, just like each round fired can never be unfired. The next boom is always coming. The only question is: What will you do before it arrives?
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