My wrist adorns a shiny silver Kenneth Cole watch with a dead battery. The hour hand stays forever pointed at the tick of five. The minute hand rests at the mark of the hour. The second hand is frozen just past the 10-second point.

I wear a broken watch. It doesn’t have any functionality. It doesn’t work. But for me, it carries a deeper meaning. The broken watch represents the irrelevance and simultaneous significance of time.

As I sit on a plane waiting to land, my next flight could be in 10 minutes or 10 hours. What difference does it make? The plane I’m on won’t land faster, nor will my next plane take off any slower. It’s all irrelevant. Yet, at the same time, there is a dire significance.

Time is the difference between making it home and being stuck in an airport. It’s the difference between then and now, between now and then, and between all past, present, and future. And also, it is only the present, it is only now, because the time will never not be now. So I’ll check my watch and know that no matter if it works, no matter if the time is precisely accurate or not even close, it doesn’t change a thing.

They say, also, that a broken clock is still right twice a day. Looking at it from a different perspective, one might say the clock is always right if you look at the right time. And, as they say, it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere. Therefore, my watch is never wrong. My time is never wrong. I don’t need a new battery. You need a new perspective.