The Third Clock

Thinking about the two clocks I have lived by—the psychological clock and the clock of experience—made me realize there was once a third clock in my life.

The first could carry me backward into memory or forward into anticipation.

The second was always here:

Now.

But for many years, when I didn’t particularly like what I was thinking or experiencing, I discovered another option.

I could temporarily leave both.

I might call it escape time.

Escape Time

For many years, almost every afternoon around four o’clock, I took a little vacation.

Captain Morgan and Coke, a sake bomber, or a few shots of vodka could transport me somewhere else.

I jokingly think of it now as Dummy Down Land.

It wasn’t exactly the past.

It wasn’t the future.

Although my body remained in the present, I wasn’t experiencing it with the same clarity.

It was chemically altered time.

Alcohol changed the speed and texture of my experience. The obligations, worries, pressures, and repetitive thoughts of ordinary life became less important.

A few drinks allowed me to temporarily step away from the world I didn’t particularly feel like dealing with.

I thought some profound thoughts there too.

Occasionally, I would sit down and write philosophical insights that seemed brilliant at the time. The next morning, I would read them sober and wonder who had written such nonsense.

Apparently, the drunken philosopher and the morning editor were not equally impressed with each other.

I had fun drinking.

Sometimes a lot of fun.

I don’t remember being particularly mean, but since quitting, enough friends have told me they prefer sober Scott that I have to accept that my drinking wasn’t nearly as charming from the outside as it sometimes appeared from the inside.

I don’t tell this story to condemn alcohol for everyone.

I tell it because I now recognize what I was doing.

I was escaping the moment I was actually living.

A Chemical Shortcut

When reality became uncomfortable, boring, demanding, repetitive, or emotionally difficult, I had discovered a chemical doorway into another version of it.

I can understand the attraction of intoxicants. Chemicals can alter experience dramatically—creating pleasure, relaxation, excitement, confidence, and even sensations that might resemble transcendence.

In that sense, they can become a shortcut toward something that feels a little like heaven.

But a shortcut toward the sensation of heaven isn’t necessarily heaven.

In my experience, alcohol increasingly disconnected me from the very thing I was actually searching for.

It wasn’t numbing my soul.

My soul didn’t need numbing.

It was numbing my ability to hear it.

And there was another problem.

While psychological time could steal my attention from the present, alcohol was slowly threatening something much more tangible.

My body.

The Third Clock Has Many Faces

Alcohol was my doorway into escape time, but it certainly isn’t the only one.

We humans seem remarkably creative at finding ways to leave experiences we don’t want to have.

It might be alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping, food, social media, entertainment, or compulsive work. Even activities that aren’t inherently harmful can become forms of escape when their primary purpose becomes avoiding the life waiting for us when we stop.

The activity itself may not be the most important distinction.

The question is what we are using it for.

Am I doing this because it enriches my experience of life?

Or am I doing it because, for a little while, I don’t want to experience my life?

That may be one of the simplest ways I have found to recognize the third clock.

The Moment the Third Clock Stopped

Then one day, something changed.

My grandson Tucker was about a year old. He was near my feet, looking up at me with those enormous, innocent eyes.

There was something about him at that age that fascinated me.

It seemed to me that his ego had barely begun constructing its story. There wasn’t much history yet. There weren’t elaborate worries about tomorrow or a carefully protected identity.

There was mostly awareness.

Life looking at life.

I adored him.

Somehow, in that ordinary moment, something in him touched something very deep in me.

I looked at Tucker.

Then I looked at the drink in my hand.

Suddenly, I saw the trajectory.

If I continued drinking excessively, there was a very real possibility that I wouldn’t be around to watch this little boy become a man.

Would I see his fifth birthday?

His tenth?

His twentieth?

There was an interesting connection to the two clocks I have been thinking about.

For perhaps the first time, I wasn’t using the future merely to worry about what might happen.

I was present enough to see the future I was creating.

The psychological clock and the clock of experience were suddenly working together.

The future wasn’t stealing me from the present.

It was informing a choice I could make in the present.

Then another realization hit me.

Tucker was watching me too.

In his innocence, he was learning what being human looked like.

And there I was, drink in hand, quietly demonstrating one possible response to life:

When reality becomes uncomfortable, alter it.

I didn’t like that picture.

Choosing an Identity

Almost instantly, another picture appeared.

I saw myself as someone who simply didn’t drink.

Not someone desperately trying to quit.

Not someone resisting temptation.

Not someone who had to defeat alcohol every morning.

A non-drinker.

The change felt almost physical. Something inside my identity reorganized itself.

I wasn’t giving something up.

I was choosing who I wanted to be.

For me, once that decision became part of my identity, quitting wasn’t particularly difficult.

I was fortunate.

That was my experience, not a universal prescription. Recovery takes different forms, and there is no weakness in counting sober days, seeking support, or struggling with cravings. For people who have developed physical dependence, abruptly stopping alcohol can also be medically dangerous and may require professional help.

My path simply did not feel like a heroic battle of willpower.

The third clock stopped running.

What I Found in Real Experience

Something unexpected happened afterward.

Sobriety didn’t eliminate the highs.

It improved them.

The highs I experience now are clearer.

They are authentic.

I remember them the next morning.

They deepen relationships rather than distort them.

They leave my body healthier rather than asking it to pay tomorrow for tonight’s vacation.

Most importantly:

They happen while I am fully here to experience them.

That brings me directly back to the two clocks.

I am beginning to understand that what I was seeking in the bottle may have been a distorted version of something I am now discovering through awareness.

Both can change my state of consciousness.

But in my experience, they move me in opposite directions.

Five slow, conscious breaths can quiet my mind enough for me to sense something deeper within myself.

Five drinks could dull the noise in my mind.

But one brings me more completely into my experience.

The other carried me away from it.

Escape or Presence

Maybe that is one difference between transcendence and escape.

Escape says:

Get me out of this moment.

What I have been calling the soul seems to say:

Come deeper into it.

For years, I thought freedom sometimes meant temporarily escaping reality.

Now I wonder whether a deeper freedom is developing the capacity to remain fully present within reality without constantly needing it to become something else.

That doesn’t mean never remembering the past.

It doesn’t mean never planning for the future.

And it certainly doesn’t mean every present moment is pleasant.

It means I can experience the moment clearly enough to decide what I want to do with it.

The first clock gives me memory and imagination.

The second gives me this experience.

The third offered escape.

I don’t need to destroy the first clock.

I can’t escape the second.

But I discovered that I could stop winding the third.

Once I did, something remarkable happened.

The present I had spent years occasionally trying to escape became the place where I began finding what I had been looking for.

No retreat into yesterday.

No rescue waiting somewhere tomorrow.

No chemically altered detour.

Just this extraordinary, difficult, beautiful moment.

And me, finally sober enough to experience it.