Time Is Muscle – you’ve probably heard or seen that phrase floating around lately, and you may be wondering, what the heck does that mean?
Well, I hear you wondering all the way from here, so maybe I should attempt to explain.
Some of you may understandably be under the mistaken impression that Time Is Muscle is a variation on Einstein’s famous Theory of Relativity, which states that the more time you work on building your muscles, the greater your gym fees will be.
This may be true, but it can be summarily discounted as a theory of the nature of the universe due to the fact that Einstein had already tipped over long before gymnasiums were invented.
“OK,” you may say, what about the next big theory: quantum mechanics?
Does the study of super-tiny things like electrons and protons and that family of little people on TV offer an explanation of how time relates to muscle?
That answer is, of course, that only three people in the world claim to understand quantum mechanics and they have all been locked away somewhere safe.
So that logically brings us to the heart. Some people already may know that, surprisingly, the heart is a muscle — just like the brain, the knee and your sore back are also, technically, muscles.
Now, everybody knows that miraculous muscle we call the heart is a valentine-shaped organ found most often in the human chest, though I can never remember on which side without feeling around up there.
Since my friend Vanessa and I have been busy putting on the second annual Time Is Muscle Cardiac Awareness Dinner and Show, I don’t even have to look up information on the physical nature of the heart, because I have been basically immersed in all things “heart” for quite a while now, so I may be considered something of an expert.
(The dinner and show is Jan. 19 at the Sheraton Hotel and features a fabulous three-course dinner, a Songs From The Heart retro rock and roll party by The Heartbeats Band, silent auction items, local artists creating art in the H’Art Gallery, a fun photo corner, and much more. It is generously sponsored by John and Joan Donald and supported by the Red Deer Regional Health Foundation. Some tickets are still available online on the foundation website.)
So here goes: the heart is a heart-shaped blob of muscle that beats away pretty much all the time inside the chest area of a human and other warm-blooded creatures (except some politicians who are said to have “no heart’).
The primary job of the heart blob is to make blood and other important bodily fluids, so that you can give blood at the Red Cross in case other people don’t have enough of it.
The heart also causes people to fall in love with other people. This is why we have heart-shaped boxes of chocolates on Valentine’s Day.
So, that muscle blob doctors like to call “the heart” pumps stuff to the far reaches of your body, like the top of your head and the tip of your toes, so that your brain muscle works properly and your feet are kept warm.
When your brain isn’t working properly, or your feet are always cold, this is called, technically, a myocardial infarction, which is no laughing matter, believe me.
So if your heart muscle isn’t working properly, the more time you have to wait to get it fixed is a very bad thing.
Therefore, Time is Muscle just means we need better facilities, such as a cardiac catheterization clinic, and expansion of our seriously overcrowded hospital, so people in Central Alberta don’t have to die of a broken heart.
Harley Hay is a Red Deer writer and filmmaker.