There’s a square I visit often. In the center of this square, there’s a clock that is made backwards. This clock is not going to the past, although that might be the starting point of a nice fiction piece. It tells the time just the same as a normal clock, that is, it’s accurately moving into the future and can be read by anybody who encounters it.

In a normal clock, the seconds hand moves, well, clockwise. But in this backwards clock, the seconds hand stays put. I call it backwards because the face of the clock moves back, counter-clockwise. Yes, I do understand the argument of the purists that tell me: “The relative movement of the hands and face is still clockwise, it is expected”. Yes, I understand, but I’m still calling this clock a backwards clock.

This rare thing is there for everyone to see and it sits mostly unnoticed in the middle of the square until somebody stops in awe of it going backwards. We all expect the clock hands to move, and to move in a certain direction. The prior is so strong that is embedded in language and used for all things that rotate. People normally take a few seconds to shake away the confusion, maybe appreciate the idea and, once informed of the current time, move on with their lives. I always enjoy observing how humans react to a breach of their strong priors.

This clock makes me wonder about our perception of reality. It makes me wonder about all the things in our lives that have a straight way, one we take for granted, yet we fail to see that the backwards way works just the same.

Moreover, this clock serves as a great reminder, a personal humbling monolith. It prompts me to think about all the things that I think I understand straight, while in reality I understand them backwards.