Keep Good Time
On the night when Jeffrey was born, his parents heard a knock on the door of their house. They looked outside the door, but there was no one there—not even a car in the driveway. His father had almost closed the door when he noticed a small box sitting on the doormat.
He picked it up and brought it inside. It was a very nicely wrapped gift box, with shiny red paper and a gold bow. There was a little note attached to the top with a silver string.
“What does it say?” asked Jeffrey’s mother.
His father flipped the note over to read it. “To your new son. –J. R. Who is J.R.?”
His mother thought for a moment. “I’m not sure,” she said. “What’s inside the box?”
Jeffrey’s father handed her the gift. She gently tore the wrapping paper open. Inside was a very nice black felt box.
“Is it some kind of jewelry?”
“I don’t know.” She opened the little black box, and they saw that the gift inside was a watch.
Now, this wasn’t an ordinary watch, like the sort you buy at the store just to keep track of the time. This was obviously a very expensive watch. It was made of pure gold, and there were diamonds set in the wristband.
It was already running, and Jeffrey’s mother held it up to her ear. It made a very soft tick, every second.
“Who would buy something like this for our little Jeffrey?” she asked.
“J.R.… J.R.…” said his father. “I have no idea! I can’t think of anyone with those initials.”
“Well it’s very nice of them,” replied his mother. “This must have cost a lot!”
As nice as it might have been, a watch wasn’t a very practical gift for a baby. At first, Jeffrey’s parents thought about selling the watch and buying something more useful for him. However, they eventually decided to keep it for him until he was older.
Soon, Jeffrey grew up to be a nice little boy. One day, on his eighth birthday, his parents decided it would be a good time to tell him about his beautiful watch. Jeffery was very excited to learn that he was the owner of something that was made of real, actual gold and diamonds! Of course, it was still too big and fancy for him to wear just anywhere yet, but he still liked to have his parents take it down from its shelf every once in a while so he could look at it and listen to it tick.
After a while, Jeffrey noticed a few things that were unusual about the watch. First of all, there was no way to change the batteries or set the time. It just kept running and keeping perfect time, even though it was years old by now.
“It must be solar-powered or something like that,” explained his father. “And to keep its time for so long, it must be really well-made. I wonder whether someone put that together by hand!”
But there was another strange thing about the watch. Of course, it had the usual hour, minute, and second hands on the main face, but there was also another little dial. This one moved much more slowly. In fact, it was only at the eight marker, so it must have moved only one spot every year of his life!
When he first noticed, he brought the watch to his mother to show her.
“Mom, look at this!” he said. “What does this dial do? It moves so slowly. I don’t think it’s changed since you first showed it to me!”
His mother took a look at the watch. “Why, that must be to keep track of how old you are! I’m surprised we never noticed it before.”
For a while, Jeffrey didn’t think much of the dial that showed his age on the watch. Then, one morning, he suddenly had a horrible thought. The dial only went up to forty-eight. What would happen when it reached the end?
Of course, the most reasonable answer was that it would just start over at one again after it went all the way around. But the more Jeffrey though about it, the less he was certain of that. The watch was so unusual to begin with—showing up out of nowhere on the night he was born, never losing track of time or needing new batteries. What if this was some kind of message that was sent to tell him how long he had left to live?
Now Jeffrey didn’t know for certain, but the older he grew, the more he began to think about his life in that way. He had a feeling deep inside that he would live to be forty-eight years old and no more.
In some ways, Jeffrey was sad when he thought about this. But on the other hand, it was somewhat comforting too. After all, if he knew exactly how long he would live, he could live his life without worrying about it. He would even have time to prepare and say goodbye to everyone before that day.
By the time Jeffrey had reached junior high, he got to thinking about what the watch would mean for his life. If he had such a short time to live, he resolved to make the best of it. He spent hours every day trying to get his homework done perfectly, and he got the best grades in most of his classes, even though he wasn’t as smart as some of the other students. He joined the running team at his school and trained until he could run for miles and miles without getting tired. He hardly had any free time at all to spend with friends, but it paid off, because he got a full ride to a good university where he planned to study engineering.
However, by the time he graduated from high school, Jeffrey began to worry that he was on the wrong track with his life. Every night, he looked at his age on the watch when he took it off, and it was getting dangerously close to halfway. He felt as though his life had hardly begun.
“I think I’ve been doing life the wrong way,” he explained to a friend during the summer before moving to college.
“What do you mean?” asked his friend.
“I spend so much time working and working, training myself to be able to do anything I put my mind to, but what’s the point? I haven’t had time to make many friends. Most people just think of me as ‘that kid who’s really smart.’ What would happen if I die? What would be the point of all this work I’ve done? Who would even care besides my parents? When I get to college, I’m going to change the way I do things.”
And he did. Jeffrey didn’t fail any classes or flunk many exams, but he spent a lot less time worrying about his grades and running speed. Instead, he tried to make connections with as many people as possible. His college experience turned out to be really different from high school. He switched his major from engineering to business. He made lots of friends and was involved in all sorts of organizations and clubs on campus. During his sophomore year, he started dating a really nice girl, and his senior year, he was elected as the student body president. The yearbook listed him as “most likely to run for President” and “best guy to get coffee with.”
Jeffrey did enjoy his college years a lot, but by the end, he was starting to get burned out. “So many meetings, so many people,” he would sometimes sigh after a long day in the student union building. “I love this, but I’m so ready for some time to myself.”
And Jeffrey didn’t forget about the watch, either. Every day, it pulled on his wrist with the weight of gold and his heart with twice that strength. He never told anyone about his worries, not even his girlfriend—now fiancée. Even his closest friends wouldn’t be able to help him with this problem. It was just too strange for them to believe. Sometimes, Jeffrey wasn’t even sure what he believed about the watch himself.
After college, Jeffrey was hired to a good job. He applied everything he knew about work and people and grew it from a little local company into a huge international corporation. By the time he was forty, he was a billionaire.
Jeffrey and his wife had three children, and they lived a very comfortable life. They bought a brand-new car every year. They lived in a mansion outside a big city, although they usually spent January in their vacation home in Hawaii. By most people’s guess, Jeffrey should have been very happy.
But he was not. If the watch was right—and Jeffery was almost certain now that it was—he only had a few short years left to enjoy the pleasures of his life. It looked like he wouldn’t ever grow old enough to see his grandchildren, or even his youngest daughter’s high school graduation. He tried to tell himself to just relax and enjoy what he had while he could, but it was impossible for him to forget about the watch.
In the last few years before his forty-eighth birthday, Jeffrey began to grow very cynical. He held fewer and fewer parties at his mansion. He often didn’t go to work even though he knew people were counting on him. He sometimes even found that he wasn’t spending much time with his wife and children. He felt disillusioned with life.
One day, he decided to talk about it with his wife.
“I just feel as though there’s not any point to life,” he said.
“You’re probably just stressed.” she said. “You should take a break from work.”
Jeffrey shook his head. “No, it’s not work. I just feel like after everything I’ve ever done, there’s no real point to it.”
“But look at us!” she exclaimed. “What do you mean there’s no point? We’re some of the most successful people on earth!”
“Yes, and that makes me even more worried,” he answered. “You see, if anyone on earth had reason to feel good about life, it would be me. My life has been a string of successes in every way imaginable. I hardly even know what failure feels like. But I don’t feel like it’s worth it.
“I’ve worked really hard. That only left me exhausted. I’ve made some of the best friends around, but even they can’t help me with my deepest fears. I’ve got the greatest wife and kids, and I’ve made a fortune greater than almost anyone in history, but what’s the good of all that when I die. Who’s going to remember me a hundred years from now? If anything, my only legacy will be spoiled grandchildren.”
His wife sighed. “Honey, you’re probably just going through a rough time right now. You should take some time off work and go get away for a few months. Take a chance to think about it. Do some writing.”
Jeffrey agreed. This was a good idea. It was two months before his birthday. He would travel the world one last time for a month before coming home to be with his family for his last days on earth.
He flew out the next week and visited all of his favorite places around the world. He sat on a beach in Thailand for hours jotting down notes in a journal. He spent days sitting in little coffee shops in Italy, watching people pass by on the sidewalks. He went for a three-day hike through a mountain pass in Switzerland. But his feelings of hopelessness only grew as his forty-eighth birthday grew closer and closer. The watch on his wrist felt heavier and heavier every day. Even so, it became even harder for him to take it off at night.
Jeffrey’s last stop was Paris. As he was getting out of a taxi in the city, he looked up to see a billboard with an advertisement for a luxury watch.
At first, he barely took notice, but a second later, he turned back in shock as he realized that the watch in the picture looked the same as the one on his wrist. He looked closely at the advertisement. It was indeed the exact same watch. It had the same shape, the same gold color, the same diamonds on the strap. And most importantly, it too had the year counter.
Unfortunately, there was almost no information on the billboard. There was no company name, no telephone number. Only the words, “Keep good time.”
Jeffrey stared in awe for several minutes at the billboard, before someone asked if he was all right.
“Oh, yes. I’m fine,” he answered, slightly embarrassed. He took a picture of the billboard and moved on.
That night, Jeffrey attended a nice dinner he had been invited to by a friend in the area. While they were eating, he couldn’t stop thinking about the words, “Keep good time.” Finally, he pulled out his photograph of the billboard and asked the man sitting next to him if he knew what company it was for.
“Why, of course,” replied the man. “Louis Viviano. Very good watches, I hear.”
As soon as he got back to his room, Jeffrey looked up instructions to a local dealer. There was one a few blocks away from his hotel.
First thing the next morning, Jeffrey practically ran over to the little jewelry store. On the window, a sign read, “Keep good time.”
Jeffrey stepped inside, and the clerk looked up from his work. “Hello, sir,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” replied Jeffrey. “I believe I own one of your watches, and I have some questions about how it works,” he said.
“I will do my best to answer.”
Jeffrey looked at one of the watches that was on display. It, too, had one of the little dials that showed its age, but this one hadn’t been started yet. It was still at zero.
He pointed at the watch. “The little dial that tracks the age of the owner,” he said. “How do you set it? Is there any way to change it?”
The clerk smiled and raised his eyebrows. “The age of the owner?” he asked with a chuckle. “I suppose it could only do that if the watch were started on the day its owner was born. Once our watches have begun keeping time, then there is no way to change them.”
Jeffrey stammered for a moment. “Do…do you mean to say that…I mean…um…so that dial isn’t used to track the length of my life?”
“Only the life of the watch.”
“Then what happens once the dial has reached the end?”
“Why, it goes back around again, I suppose, like any watch dial!” laughed the store clerk. “What did you think it would do?”
“Well, I suppose I wondered…well, this sounds silly now that I’m in this store, but you may believe it was all very real to me yesterday. I suppose I wondered whether that might mark the end of my own life.”
The store clerk smiled again. “I think you’ve missed the entire point. This watch isn’t made to count down the hours left but to remember the years that have passed!”
Jeffrey began to chuckle as well. “I see that now. And to think I’ve spent my whole life thinking that the forty-eight on my watch marked the end of my own life! I’m sure you must think I’m a fool!”
The clerk only smiled at this. “But did your friends agree with this conclusion?” he asked.
“Well, I suppose I never told anyone else,” replied Jeffrey. “It seemed all too serious. Now I see that it was a joke.”
The clerk frowned as though in thought. “Perhaps a joke. Perhaps not,” he said.
“What do you mean.”
“Well, I think that all too often, many people do see their lives the way that you have,” replied the clerk. “You’ve spent years thinking only of its end.”
Jeffrey nodded.
“Perhaps you saw the sign on our window when you came in?” asked the clerk.
“Keep good time?”
“Yes, that’s right. I think it’s time you start doing that yourself. Think about this: if you meet with a friend for coffee, but you spend the whole time thinking about what time you will be done, would you say that you have had a good time?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you think it is any different with life?”
Jeffrey nodded. “I suppose you’re right. But I don’t know what I can do about it. No matter how well things turned out, none if it mattered as long as I knew I would be gone next month—or at least, I thought I knew!”
The clerk nodded. “And yet, there are some people, who—no matter how badly things are going in the moment—seem to be content with life anyways.”
“What kind of people are like that?” asked Jeffrey.
“Those who know that the end of their life is but the beginning.”
