REAL TIME Chapter 1 - When Things Ended Without Asking You

For a long time, things ended without consulting anyone.

Days ended. Workdays, anyway. Even when the work itself did not feel finished, the day did. Night arrived with some authority. Shops closed. Offices emptied. The lights went off whether or not you were satisfied. This was not always convenient. It was, however, decisive.

Absence also carried meaning. If someone did not return a message, or did not appear, or did not follow up, that absence did not remain indefinitely interpretable. After a certain amount of time, it resolved. Silence, eventually, meant no. Or at least, not now. One did not have to keep checking. (Most people didn’t.)

This was not because people were clearer, braver, or more disciplined—at least not in any reliable way. It was because time did some of the work for them.

Time closed things.

It is easy to misremember this as etiquette, or social grace, or better manners. It was not. Etiquette is fragile. Norms can be argued with. Time was harder to negotiate. When a day ended, it ended for everyone. When a season passed, it passed regardless of unfinished business. Even institutions—slow, imperfect ones—operated inside temporal frames that imposed limits. Offices closed. Terms expired. Files were archived. Projects ended not because they were resolved, but because the calendar insisted.

None of this guaranteed wisdom or fairness. It did, however, reduce the number of decisions required to move on.

Closure was not something you achieved. It arrived.

And because it arrived impersonally, it did not feel like a judgment. No one had to explain why something was over. No one had to defend the decision. It was simply late now. Or tomorrow. Or no longer this week. That was enough.

Time, in this sense, functioned as a background authority. It did not persuade. It did not argue. It did not care about your intentions. It ended things anyway.

Most people did not notice this authority while it was present. Authority rarely draws attention when it works. It becomes visible only when it disappears.

When we talk about time now, we usually talk about it as a resource. Something to manage. Something to spend or waste. Occasionally something to savor. This language is so familiar that it hides a more basic role time once played.

Time was not merely something you had. It was something that decided.

This is what is meant here by authority. Not power. Not control. Certainly not morality. Authority, in this narrower sense, refers to the capacity to close questions without requiring justification. An authority ends things so that others do not have to. That may sound abstract. It wasn’t.

Time used to do that.

It decided when a response was no longer expected. When an opportunity had passed. When a conversation was over. It did so without explanation and without appeal. You could regret the outcome, but you could not reopen it indefinitely. There was a before and an after, and the distinction mattered more than people realized at the time.

This authority was not experienced as oppressive. Most of the time it was barely experienced at all. It simply reduced the number of open loops a person had to carry. You did not need to decide whether something was finished; you waited, and then it was.

The significance of this is easy to underestimate. Decisions are not costly only because they are difficult. They are costly because they expose the person making them to interpretation. To decide is to be seen deciding. When time decided instead, that exposure was avoided. (Which was, among other things, a relief.)

Once time stopped performing this role—once it no longer closed things on its own—the burden did not disappear.

It moved.

The authority of time did not collapse. It did not fail publicly. There was no moment when people agreed it was gone.

It simply stopped closing things.

Days still end, of course. Clocks continue to work. Calendars advance. But the passage of time no longer resolves questions the way it once did. A day can end without ending the work. A delay can stretch without becoming an answer. Silence can persist without settling into meaning.

This change did not announce itself. It emerged gradually, and then unevenly.

Work extended past the workday, first occasionally, then routinely. Messages became deliverable at any hour, which meant they remained answerable at any hour. Conversations acquired the strange property of being pausable without being concluded. One could stop without stopping.

Institutions adapted quickly. Individuals did not have much choice.

What disappeared was not time itself, but its capacity to impose an ending that others would recognize as legitimate. Closure became optional. Optionality, as it turns out, does not distribute evenly.

At first, this felt like flexibility. Many people welcomed it. At least at first.

But time continued to pass.

And without an external mechanism to convert passage into closure, nothing finished itself anymore. Things lingered. Not dramatically. Quietly. They remained just open enough to require attention, just unfinished enough to invite return.

Things continued.

That was the problem.

When time stopped closing things, someone still had to.

This is the shift that matters most. Closure did not vanish; it became discretionary. Someone had to decide when a conversation was over, when a delay had become an answer, when work was done enough to stop. And once closure became a decision, it became an act.

Acts invite interpretation.

Ending something now signals intention. It raises questions. Why now? Why this way? Why not later? The same outcome that once arrived impersonally now appears chosen. And chosen outcomes attach to the chooser.

This is where the cost appears.

Decisions require justification, or at least the appearance of it. They expose the person making them to disagreement, disappointment, and reinterpretation. They create a record. Time used to absorb this exposure. Now it does not.

What had been structural became personal.

This change is often misread as a problem of confidence or executive function. It is neither. It is a redistribution of labor. Systems that no longer close things offload that work onto individuals, who must perform it in public, repeatedly, and without shared standards.

The result is not decisiveness. It is fatigue.

Closure, once automatic, became discretionary. Discretion proved expensive.

When closure becomes discretionary, stopping feels aggressive.

Silence, once neutral, becomes legible. Rest feels provisional. Pauses invite inquiry. Ending something now appears less like compliance with time and more like a statement about priorities, interest, or regard.

This changes the experience of ordinary life.

People hesitate to stop because stopping now requires explanation. They continue not because continuation is desired, but because ending feels like an act that must be defended. Commitments stretch. Conversations remain open. Work tapers but does not conclude.

Nothing compels an ending anymore. Someone must choose it.

And choosing it means standing behind it.

This exposure is subtle. It rarely arrives as conflict. More often it appears as a low-grade vigilance: the sense that one must remain available, responsive, and reversible. Not indefinitely—just longer than intended.

The burden is not dramatic. It is cumulative.