The Time Keeper is, from its outset, “a story about the meaning of time” as it relates to humanity (7). Within the fable, Dor is a mythical figure who establishes mathematics, measuring, and timekeeping out of his curiosity and his desire to understand the rhythmic patterns he sees in nature. When the old man asks Dor why he began measuring, Dor explains that he simply wanted “[t]o know” (47). This impulse for knowledge is not necessarily seen as an evil in and of itself, but both for Dor and for the human beings who will come after him, timekeeping becomes an obsession. Eventually, once timekeeping has become mainstream—due directly to Dor’s timekeeping devices—people tie their individual identities to the concept of time. Throughout the novel, the most unhappy people have a dissatisfied relationship with time, and the Albom suggests that people should learn to accept the nature of time without trying to control it.

The narrator challenges the reader to “imagine a life without timekeeping” precisely because it is something most human beings take for granted (8). Human beings orient themselves in time—hours, minutes, days, months, and years. This orientation, though, is not seen as providing stability to humans.