In The Power of Imagination, I compared Eichmann to a cog in a clock, unaware of the bigger picture. This morning, when I re-read it, I thought about how it is not the clock that makes time pass. A clock is just a measuring device, like a tape measure or an odometer. All these human concepts. The birds have no clocks and yet they know when to do what. The nest-building, the partner-finding, the egg-hatching, the migrating. It all happens. All around them are clocks, I guess. Leaves falling, buds growing, sun-rises, rain falls, tides, moon phases.

Humans have our clocks and yet we seem to know so little. We know when we need to be at school or at work or how long it is since we ate. But we don’t know when or how to find the right partner, we don’t know how to prioritise raising kids…