Time, not no time

So… time. Yeah. Okay. So…  

Time…

Definition and concept of time is baffling, perplexing, enigmatic, and scientists and philosophers have spent a lot of time (pun intended) trying to explain it. It’s been defined as measure, period, chronology, one-directional flow of events, dimension, scalar quantity, emergent property, space-time, time-space, entropy, clock...

But I do not want to touch on those ideas, because a) I am not very competent in the confusing scientific approach, and b) I have not made up my mind about whether or not I even believe time exists, except as a formality we adopted to make life more convenient. (Cycles – yes, time – not so sure.)  In a documentary I saw a long time ago, someone said “When people say it’s Thursday, I have no idea what they mean”. Hahaha… And indeed, no tree needs a calendar to know when to bloom, no teenager needs to know his age to get his world turned upside down, no bird needs a clock to know when to wake up.

I would like to invoke your imagination. Picture space-time and us in that space-time, now mark year 2020 A.D. with a red dot and year 3586 B.C. with a yellow dot. Envision how far apart they are. Now move back and look at those dots again, they would be much closer to each other. Now move back farther, farther, farther… At some point the space between them vanishes and we are left with one orange dot. So! From the point of view of eternity and infinity – time is the same at all times, just like space is the same everywhere. 

Another thing that interests me is the relativity of time. Again, not the scientific relativity – clocks running slower or faster, but the relativity we feel individually, through experiences. Time is not like a ruler, where a meter is always one hundred centimeters, its length changes according to our moods and the state of being: it can be long, short, heavy and light, it can become viscous or diluted. When we are working, when we do something we enjoy – time runs fast. This happens to me when I am writing – it's as if I enter another dimension, – at one point I look at the clock and… What?! Is that the time? Or when we are waiting, when we are anxious – time stretches like taffee and half an hour seems like a lifetime.

There was a time when I was surrounded by people who waited for Fridays, which according to them was the best day of the week. To me it’s like saying “w” is my favorite letter, or “La” is my favorite musical note, or green is my favorite color. It all depends on when, where, how, how much, for what and with whom. 

So, yeah, waiting for Fridays… People waited for Fridays to enjoy their lives, they counted down to Fridays, they killed their Wednesdays, in the hopes that Friday would come a little sooner, thus completely dismissing the rest of the weekdays, thus utterly losing the rest of the weekdays. Putting so much pressure on one little day and on yourself (because you have to make the best of it, you waited an entire week for it!) makes your Friday fly so fast, that pretty soon you realize it’s already Sunday and tomorrow you have to start counting down again.

This disrespect towards time seemed awful to me, so, I made a conscious decision not to fall into that trap and enjoy each and every day. And something miraculous happened, my time stretched. The years became longer, months fuller, days more productive. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this decision made me “here and now”. Because what does it mean to be here and now? It means that we notice each second that passes by; we notice it, we remember it, we are glad to see it, we are not waiting for it to pass, we don’t think about any place else, any time else, we are enjoying what we are doing and what we are surrounded by.

I think we should stop insulting time with phrases such as "time flies", "a race against time", "killing time", "passing time", "losing time", "wasting time", "out of time", "no time to lose", "on borrowed time", "time hangs heavy", "pressed for time", "run out of time" and my least favorite "life is short". 

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us […] Life is long if you know how to use it.” ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Here is where, I think, our misconception about time in general comes from: our clocks and calendars are based on the planetary movements – Earth rotates on its axis in 86,400 seconds, it moves around the Sun in 365 days and 6 hours, but that’s Earth’s movement, not mine. I happen to be on Earth, sure, but I am not Earth. It affects me, yes, but so does the butterfly flapping its wing. Counting my time using Earth’s movement seems irrational to me.

To me time is the collection of images I gather as I walk through life: a conversation I had, a thought I thought, a book I read, a mountain I gazed at… I washed my hands, I played a piano, I cooked a meal, I walked, I saw a house, a mouse, a moose... And if I pay attention to every detail around me and am constantly conscious of where I am and what I am doing – then the amount of images in my head multiplies, making time longer and smoother. 

So... time... Yeah...

I'll leave you with an excerpt from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by C.S. Lewis.

“If you knew Time as well as I do,” said the Hatter, “you wouldn’t talk about wasting IT. It’s HIM.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Alice.

“Of course you don’t!” the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. “I dare say you never even spoke to Time!”

“Perhaps not,” Alice cautiously replied: “but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.”

“Ah! that accounts for it,” said the Hatter. “He won’t stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do almost anything you liked with the clock. […]”