I don’t see myself as a science freak or having great knowledge about Time, but after giving this subject some thought over the last couple of days i felt compelled to at least put pen to paper and put in my own words what Time means to me and the consequences it has on our daily lives.
Its a very interesting subject because consciously we never really think about it and our lives are usually preoccupied with the joys and concerns about life. Einstein proved mathematically that time is relative to motion and simultaneity doesn’t exist for people moving at different speeds. Quantum physicists have argued that two kinds of time exist. One being ordinary human time and time at the quantum level, which can flow backwards under the right conditions.
A German philosopher Nietzsche spent time proving the theory called eternal recurrence. It means that everything that can possibly happen has already happened an infinite number of times and will continue to repeat that forever.
However the essence of Time itself comes back to what we call “lifespan”. All Biological and living things found on earth have a lifespan that more or less defines time for it. Even inorganic things like rocks have a “lifespan”. They will break down over time and end up being dust. Stars in our universe definitely have a lifespan. After they burn up their nuclear fuel, they collapse into black holes or super-dense neutron stars. It makes obvious sense that inorganic and organic material have a “use by date”. IE A Time limit.
Even with that uncomfortable thought that sits in the back of the mind and pops up every now and again and tells the brain the body will die some day in the foreseeable future makes this argument a poignant fact. It would seem that animals don’t think about time in their minds and most likely they don’t know they will eventually die. They might think in terms of an eternal now if they think that at all.
Everything in our daily lives is built around Time. Without Time the orchestra fails to perform, without time we cant launch our Space shuttle, without a time mechanism on board voyager there wouldn’t be precise photo shots of Mars, without time, cell division in the human body would malfunction. These are just a few. Because Time in our lives spreads through such a broad spectrum of our daily lives it cannot be discarded because it is Universal.
A very curious thought comes to mind, the older I get, the faster time seems to go. When I was a young kid, it would take an eternity to get to 40. But now doing something i really enjoy like traveling is like a day or two has passed between my readings of the Sunday newspaper.
With a subject such as this i cannot help but reflect a little on the old adage made mention in a Biblical script that i am reminded once again like in Ecclesiastes 3:1-9 “To every thing there is a season, and a TIME to every purpose under the heaven. “A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to arend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
