Abstract:
Time affects our bodies from the day we are born due to the natural process of ageing. Over the years, technological advances have enabled humans to make vast growths in various fields. However, we are still incapable of controlling the flow of time. Therefore, man’s greatest aspiration is to interrupt, delay and reverse the course of time in an effort of maintaining youth permanently. Today’s generation suffers from khronophobia, which is the fear of time, because we reject ageing, decay and death and see it as something that is beyond our control.1 Ageing is frowned upon in our society, largely due to the negative social representations by media, urging people to immediately conceal visible signs of age and imperfections with beauty products, anti-wrinkle creams, botox and surgical treatments. These ideas are so profoundly weaved into the modern man’s mind that new objects replace older ones that have acquired any indication of use and age. Our generation is obsessed with the new and shiny, just like the pristine objects behind the glass in the museum, where one only has visual access so that they don’t get corrupted or damaged. Those objects are outside of their time, they exist but the objects themselves are abstracted from the ageing process. This notion of newness and timelessness does not work in real life and thus, gives a false idea of mortality. In many ways buildings today are being designed with timelessness and monumental qualities. There is a lack of character and traces of use and age in today’s buildings, which initiates a sense of normalcy around the notions of permanence and immortality, creating a society where people have become more fearful of death, time and the old. Due to this fear, we remove ourselves from the conversations that involve themes of death and age. “The weakening of the experience of time in contemporary life has devastating mental effects,” says Juhani Pallasma.2 Therefore when someone in the family passes away, we often place ourselves under a lot pressure to quickly come out of the situation by often suppressing our emotions, eventually leading to depression and anxiety. The emotion which is commonly elicited as a result of loss is grief. Grief is the emotional suffering one feels when someone they love is taken away and is considered to be an unpleasant state of mind. Our constant neglect and a complete rejection of the phenomena of age and death has created a taboo around these natural processes, which has also rendered grief as a negative emotion in our minds. Whereas, grieving is a method that helps us come out of difficult situations by acknowledging that failure and being imperfect are all part of being human.