In this humor-filled and thought-provoking talk, Garry Leonard, Professor of Literature and Film at the University of Toronto, reveals to us that the very source of anxiety of our time is "our unexamined relationship to time."

Leonard shows us how our relationship to time evolved through the history of human civilization using poetry from Renaissance to modernism, from Hamlet to The Waste Land. He argues that that relationship has become monolithic in our ever-changing world, a contradiction that is eloquently typified by his five mythologies of modern time that organize our relationship to time, which have in common a perpetual "not yet." Striving for progress, efficiency, perfection, satisfaction, and innovation is an act of constant waiting, "an imitation of immortality, that everything is yet to be, about to become." And that is not the way to live.

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.