The Clock That Never Ticked

There was a clock in my grandmother’s house that never ticked.

It hung above the fireplace—heavy, carved, ancient. The kind of thing you don’t question as a child. You just accept it. It was always midnight, or always noon. Depending on how you looked at it.

Years later, I’d ask my mother why no one ever fixed it.

She just smiled. “Some things are meant to stay still.”

At the time, that felt like a non-answer. But now? Now it feels like one of the most honest things anyone’s ever said.

Time has a strange way of moving through us.

It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t knock. It just arrives—quietly at first, then all at once. One day you’re chasing fireflies barefoot in the yard, and the next you’re staring at your own reflection wondering when your eyes began to look tired.

I’ve tried to mark the moments that matter. Tried to take photographs. Journal entries. Mental snapshots. But meaning doesn’t always happen during the celebrations. It doesn’t shout. Sometimes, it slips in like a whisper—during a drive home, or while folding laundry, or in the pause before a kiss.

That’s why I think about that broken clock so often.

It didn’t measure seconds, but somehow, it captured eternity.

Because that room—my grandmother’s living room—never changed. No matter how many birthdays passed, or how many people left, that room held the same stillness. The smell of cardamom tea. The creak of the rocking chair. The gold-tinted wallpaper peeling at the corners.

The clock never moved.

And so, in that room, neither did time.

As a teenager, I wanted to escape that kind of stillness.

I wanted speed. Motion. Progress. I thought time had to be used, controlled, optimized. I filled my days with lists. I ran from moment to moment like they were checkboxes. I thought meaning came from motion.

But one day—after a long week, after a funeral—I sat on my apartment floor and listened to the hum of my refrigerator. I did nothing. Said nothing. Just existed. And in that moment, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years:

Peace.

The kind of peace that doesn’t demand. The kind that simply is.

And I remembered the broken clock.

I visited that house again not long ago.

It’s empty now. My grandmother’s gone. The furniture covered in white sheets. The air thick with dust and memory. But the clock was still there.

Still broken.

Still beautiful.

I stood in front of it for a long time, wondering what it had witnessed in its silence. Births. Arguments. New Year’s Eve countdowns that never counted. Hushed prayers. Forgotten laughter.

And I wondered why no one had ever bothered to fix it.

But maybe that was the point.

Maybe it was never broken. Maybe it was a reminder.

That some moments don’t need measuring.

Some memories live outside of time.

We live in a world obsessed with time.

Productivity. Efficiency. Deadlines. Milestones. We count every hour, every step, every achievement. But the heart doesn’t tick like that. It beats irregularly, with rhythm, with feeling. The soul doesn’t march—it meanders.

Some of the most meaningful moments in my life were unplanned.

A phone call at 2 a.m.

A song heard through a stranger’s window.

A story my grandfather told when he thought I was asleep.

A hug that lasted too long and not long enough.

These things aren’t measurable. But they matter. God, they matter.

They’re the reason I believe that love isn’t something you find in the future. It’s something you recognize in the present. In the pause. In the stillness. In the “now.”

I still wear a watch.

But some days, I don’t look at it.

Some days, I let the hours drift. I let the light move across my walls like a slow dance. I make coffee slowly. I call someone without a reason. I read the same page twice—not because I didn’t understand it, but because it felt true.

We forget, sometimes, that we’re not machines.

We’re stories. And stories don’t follow schedules.

They unfold.

They linger.

They return in fragments and feelings and flashes of memory—like the moment I found a piece of string in my coat pocket and remembered it tied around a gift my sister gave me fifteen years ago.

What kind of clock measures that?

I think we all carry a version of the broken clock inside us.

A part of us that doesn’t care about deadlines or calendars or countdowns.

A part that just wants to be held. To be known. To be still.

And maybe we should listen to that part more often.

Maybe the goal isn’t to fix the clock—but to become it. To stop chasing time and start noticing life. To let some hours pass unmeasured. To sit in the quiet of who we are without trying to hurry into who we’re supposed to become.

Author’s Note:

Time will keep ticking. That’s its nature. But meaning? Meaning waits. It lingers in places we forget to look. So the next time you feel behind or lost—find a quiet room, close your eyes, and listen.

You might just find your own broken clock.

Still.

Silent.

Sacred.