TIME IS RELATIVE…relatively speaking.
One dictionary defines time as “the distance between two events.” I like this definition. It’s short and sweet, making it difficult to refute. The distance between today and tomorrow is twenty-four hours. Seven days is the distance from one day in the week to the same day again in the next week. But in this context, time is conceptual, subjective, and thus relative. It isn’t “real.” You can’t touch it or see it. So, its existence is merely a creation of man to mark the passing of his life.
TIMEWHAT IS IT? Is it the watch on your wrist, the clock on the wall, the sand in the hourglass? No, of course it isn’t. Those are devices for tracking time, the movement of the heavenly bodies around the universe, around you and me. So, what then is Time? Well, grandpa says “back in my time”, we did this and that.” How can grandpa sit you on his knee and tell you about “his” time? Aren’t you and he alive, living and breathing at the same time? Yes, but grandpa is talking about a time before you were born, “another” time, one that exists in a space relative to your time. He wants you to travel beyond the time you know, and back into his.
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
All of us, no matter how old we are, remember “The Good Old Days.” Why is that? We remember because it was always just before our time. We just missed it. We’ve grown up hearing people talk about it, people who belonged to a golden era. That was a time when people didn’t have to lock their doors at night, (mush less in broad daylight.) A handshake was as good as a signed contract. A cup of coffee cost a nickel, and came with free refills. The air was clean and so was the water. TV was called radio. And everyone read books.
Yesteryear was when a man opened a door for a lady. And they tipped their hat when she walked by. And if they didn’t have a hat, they pretended that they did, and tipped it anyway. A man was as good as his word. And his word was as good as gold. And when he made a promise, he kept it.
Aaahhhh, time
TIME FLIES
It has so many unique talents, especially for something that doesn’t exist. It crawls, it runs, and it flies. It makes mountains into canyons, and oceans into deserts. It even heals all wounds. But, it also makes people die. If there were no time, people wouldn’t die. Even more than our loved ones, we pay respect to time. Look at our tombstones. We engrave one name, and two dates: our date of birth and the day we died. And in between, there’s just time. “There’s a time for everything; and for everything a time: a time to laugh, a time to cry, a time to live and a time to die.”
Each of these “times” would be different from one person to the next, from me to you. My time to laugh might be your time to cry, and for every baby that begins its life, someone else is ending theirs.
This proves that TIME IS RELATIVE, relatively speaking.
