"Everybody in Indonesia always wanted to know if I was married. It was rude to answer, “Tidak”—No. That was too blunt. It disrespected marriage. Better to say “Belum”—Not yet."

BARBARIAN DAYS: A SURFING LIFE by WILLIAM FINNEGAN

I have a fleeting, but vivid, memory of myself as a thirteen year old girl looking at myself in the mirror in my bathroom. My toothpick legs were nobby and much too long for the red baseball shirt I had draped over my bony shoulders. The shirt read “Girls Rule.”, and was punctuated as stated. Blonde hair was smoothly packed into a pony tail that was heavy towards my left ear and I was tan—the type of tan that comes from parents who don’t believe in sunscreen. But the important part is not what I was wearing, it is not even that I happened to be looking in the mirror at my prepubescent self. The important part is that as I passed through the bathroom and caught a glimpse of myself that day, I thought, “I will remember this moment forever.”

That seems like an unusual thought for a thirteen year old to have in the first place. But I am even more shocked by the fact that I have not forgotten that moment yet. Names of other people drift through my ears, the location of my keys lies dormant and lost in the maze of my loci, but I have not forgotten that sliver of my thirteen year old self.

It floats along with me every time I handle the concept of time. I can gauge my emotional state by the distance that I feel I have put between that girl and the person in this very moment. Sometimes galaxies and wormholes twist between us and sometimes I feel like that girl was me yesterday, or an hour ago, or a second ago.

More than just marriage, Finnegan is also interacting with the concept of time. What more is marriage than a litmus test for human understanding of how time stretches before us, after us, and between us?

Indonesians seem to appreciate this concept by developing the language to express the now vs. the future. It is a gentle difference that Finnegan enumerates, but a stark one. “No” does not quite imply infinity, but it suggests that the speaker is wearing blinders of sorts. “No” deals with a cross section of reality—only the immediate moment. As per human nature, a denial in one moment can easily salve into acceptance. “No” is a crafty form of plastic language with questionable intentions. On the other hand, “Not yet” accepts the unknown of the future. While it is presumptive, it suggests a lack of finality, a lack of utter resolve. Perhaps this is a more mature understanding of how time unfolds before the human consciousness.

And yet, in America, people in their early twenties continue to say “I do” with cross- sectional implications. What that really means is “I do, right now.” But how will you feel 10 years from now when your bones become heavier and your skin softer? The language expresses no appreciation for the movement of time as an accordion, undulating, expanding, and contracting—so I must assume that the person using the language also lacks that appreciation. Instead, perhaps the promise should be “I will”. I will 2 minutes from now, 10 years from now, a century from now.

I think understanding the implications of time in language is an important step towards understanding time in human perception. Finnegan captures this understanding best with his passage about the questions that Indeonesian children liked to ask:

 “Jam berapa?” What time is it? That was the question kids loved to ask, pointing at their watchless wrists.“Jam karet.” Rubber time. It was a stock joke answer, meaning that time was a flexible concept in Indonesia.