‘How awful!’
‘Not only that, thinking of your dog dying … it’s too sad for words.’
‘Exactly. That’s why I just couldn’t have another, because when our little Darius died it was far too upsetting.’
‘You really do see some complete loonies!’
‘Measuring time in dogs?! And why not in cats or parrots?’
‘And if he had a cow, would he measure it in cows?’
Listening to all his friends talking about Fernand’s idea, it dawned on Hector that what they didn’t like at all was that measuring your life in dogs makes it seem shorter. Two, three, four dogs, even five, doesn’t make it sound as if you’re here for very long!
He understood better why Fernand unnerved people a bit with his way of seeing things. If Fernand had measured his life in canaries or goldfish, would he have had more friends?
In his own lonely and odd little way, Fernand had put his finger on a real problem with time. For that matter, lots of poets had been talking about it for ever, and Sabine had too.
They said … the years fly, time is fleeting, and time goes by too quickly.
HECTOR AND THE LITTLE BOY WHO WANTED TO SPEED UP TIME
EVERY so often, children also came to see Hector, and, when they did, of course it was their parents who had decided to send them.
The children who came to see Hector weren’t really ill – it was more that their parents found them difficult to understand, or else they were children who were too sad, too scared or too excitable. One day, he talked to a little boy who, funnily enough, was called Hector, just like him. Little Hector was very bored at school, and time seemed to go by too slowly for him. So he didn’t listen, and he ended up with bad marks.
Big Hector asked Little Hector, ‘Right now, what do you wish for most in the world?’
Little Hector didn’t hesitate for a second. ‘To become a grown-up straight away!’
Hector was surprised. He had expected Little Hector’s answer to be: ‘For my parents to get back together’, or ‘To get better marks at school’, or ‘To go on a school ski trip with my friends’.
So he asked Little Hector why he wanted to become a grown-up straight away.
‘To decide things!’ said Little Hector.
If he became a grown-up straight away, explained Little Hector, he could decide for himself what time to go to bed, when to wake up and where he could spend his holidays. He could see the friends he wanted, have fun doing what he wanted and not see grown-ups he didn’t want to see (like his father’s new girlfriend). He would also have a real job, because going to school wasn’t a real job. Besides, you didn’t choose to go to school and then you spent hours, days, years watching time passing slowly and getting bored.
Hector thought that Little Hector had let his imagination run away with him about life as a grownup: after all, grown-ups still had to do things they didn’t like doing, and see people they didn’t like seeing. But he didn’t tell Little Hector that, because he thought that, for the moment, it was a good thing that Little Hector was dreaming of a happy future, since his present was not that happy.
So he asked Little Hector, ‘But if you became a grownup straight away, it would mean that you’d already lived for a good few years, so you’d have fewer left to live. Wouldn’t that bother you?’
Little Hector thought it over. ‘Okay, it’s a bit like a video game when you lose an extra life. It’s annoying, but it doesn’t stop you having fun.’ Then he looked at Hector. ‘What about you? Would it bother you to have already lost one or two lives?’
Big Hector thought that Little Hector might become a psychiatrist himself one day.
AT the end of each day, Hector thought about all the people he’d listened to who were worried about time.
He thought about Sabine, who wanted to slow time down.
He thought about Fernand, who measured his life in dogs.
He thought about Little Hector, who wanted to speed time up.
And many others …
Hector spent more and more time thinking about time.
HECTOR noticed that, if he asked them, almost all the people he saw had two kinds of worries.
Sometimes, it was the fear that time was passing too quickly, which is quite a distressing fear to have because you can’t do much about the speed of time. It’s like being on a horse that gallops on without heeding you, which had actually happened to Hector once, and it had given him a real fright.
At other times, it was the feeling that time was passing too slowly, and that … well, that’s like sitting on a donkey that doesn’t want to budge. Of course, it was mostly youngsters who told Hector that, or else very unhappy people who were waiting for things to get better and for whom every day seemed to last for weeks.
Hector thought that in order to help people who were worried about time he could suggest some little exercises to make them think. Because, when you’re a psychiatrist, you can obviously just tell people what they need to do to get better, but the chances are they won’t listen properly. It’s better to help them discover by themselves what would be good for them. Suggesting little exercises to make people think was a method favoured by Hector and quite a few of his colleagues.
Hector took out his notebook and got ready to make some notes. First, he thought of Fernand and wrote:
Time Exercise No. 1: Measure your life in dogs.
This exercise might help people to realise that it was better not to wait too long to do the things you really wanted to do. On the other hand, it could make you even more worried about time passing, and especially about how much of it you had left. Was it such a good exercise then, after all? Hector remembered having learnt at school that some philosophers thought a good life was one which involved thinking every day that one day it would all end. There was even a philosopher who had music played for him every evening at bedtime. Singers would gather at the foot of his bed and sing, ‘He lived!’, as if it was his funeral. But, as Hector knew, some people are a bit crazy, even some philosophers (and don’t tell anyone this, but even some psychiatrists too).
Hector thought of Little Hector.
Time Exercise No. 2: Make a list of what you wanted to do when you were little and dreaming of being grown up.
Again, this could help spur you on to do the things you really wanted to do. But it could just as easily discourage you by making you think it was too late. Hector would have liked to find an exercise which worked for everyone.
Hector thought of Sabine and wrote:
Time Exercise No. 3: Over the course of one day, count how much time you have for yourself. Sleeping doesn’t count (unless it’s at the office).
It was still very hard to tell what the results of this exercise would be. Some people would realise that they didn’t have a moment to themselves and that all their time was spent on other people – he was thinking of Sabine – and others would realise that they had nothing else to do but enjoy themselves or think about themselves. But Hector had