Skip to main content

Time

 


Every other post you find on social media (that’s not about politics) seems to be about what a terrible year 2020 is, how they can’t wait for this year to be over. Sometimes they refer to 2020 with colorful expletives, like all the bad things that have happened this year are somehow 2020’s fault. Obviously, the year itself doesn’t care if we are having a good time or a bad time. In fact, the year (any year) doesn’t even exist except as a useful construct which we invented to help organize out lives.

As an organizational tool it would be great, except that our perception of our own invented tool is easily distorted. When you are enjoying yourself, time seems to whip past. When you are wanting it to pass quickly, because you are looking forward to an event, or hating the task you are currently doing, it seems to drag. A scientist could no doubt devise a way to prove to me that 2 hours at a party passes at the same rate as 2 hours at work but there are times when I am skeptical. And there is that curious thing that happens as you get older. The pace of time seems to increase exponentially as we age. There is a good explanation for that. When you are four years old and you can’t wait until you are five; that span of time is a year, that year is literally a quarter of your lifetime. When you are 70 years old thinking about when you turn 71; that is still one year, but now that year is 1/70th of your lifetime.

I wrote a play once called “Elevator Time” in which three characters are stuck in an elevator. Here is a snippet:

Sam: (looking at her watch) How long have we been in here?

Irene: About seven minutes.

Sam: Seems like seven hours.

Irene: Told ya so. Time dilation. I think it’s Einstein’s third law of elevators.

 Einstein did not write any laws about elevators. But he did come up with the notion of time dilation. Time, according to Einstein, not only seems to move at different rates, but it actually does move at different rates for people travelling at different speeds. If I could get on a space ship and travel at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, by the time I returned to Earth in a year (my time) hundreds or even thousands of years would have passed on Earth. Time is ‘relative’ to the observer.

Shakespeare mentioned time a lot. He often linked it metaphorically with death, with which Shakespeare also seemed obsessed. It is, after all, one of the inevitabilities of life.

 “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”  -- Richard II

 “For who would bear the whips and scorns of time.”  -- Hamlet

 “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time.”  -- Macbeth

 “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back.

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.”  -- Troilus and Cressida

 “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right.”  -- Hamlet

“And that old common arbitrator, Time,

Will one day end it.” – Troilus and Cressida

 Shakespeare had issues with time. As do we all. So, while 2020 has seen the great pandemic, overt racism, protests, and deaths of beloved icons, it seems natural to want to blame the year, and want it to come to an end. But it is not the fault of the year, and wishing it would end soon only makes time move slower (or seem to). I think it is a better idea to accept things as they come. Fix the things you can; don’t stress about the things you can’t, and live in the now. Don’t concern yourself with last year or next year. The now is all we have.

 

(My science fiction novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon and other online sources).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Child of the . . .

  What was it like to grow up as a child in the 90s? How about the 1940’s? Thinking about a child growing up in each different decade, conjures up images in my mind. But that is all they are: images. I was a child in the 1960’s. I can tell you what it felt like to be growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, but what it felt like to me is not what the history books remember. History will tell you the 60’s was about the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the space race. The 70’s was Disco and Watergate. I remember being aware of all of those things, but to me this era was about finding time to play with my friends, something I probably share with a child of any decade. It was about navigating the social intricacies of school.   It was about the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, The Animals, Jefferson Airplane. It was Bullwinkle, the Wonderful World of Color, and Ed Sullivan. There are things that a kid pays attention to that the grown-ups don’t. Then there are things the adults ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bureaucrats

  I am one of those nameless, faceless bureaucrats. Yes, that is my job. Though I actually have a name; I even am rumored to have a face. Bureau is the French word for desk, so you could say bureaucrats are “desk people.” In short, I work for the government. I sometimes have to deliver unpleasant news to a taxpayer. I sometimes have to tell them that the deed they recorded won’t work and they will have to record another one with corrections. Or we can’t process their deed until they pay their taxes. I can understand why some of these things upset people. The thing is, we don’t decide these things. It is not the bureaucrats that make the laws. The legislature writes the laws. We are required to follow the law.   If you are going to get mad at someone, get mad at the legislature. Or maybe get mad at the voters who voted the legislature in (That’s you, by the way). The same thing happens when the voters vote in a new district, or vote for a bond, or a new operating levy for an ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Telephonicus domesticus

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone from 1877 bears about as much similarity to the modern smart phone as an abacus bears to a PC or Mac. There are just about as many leaps in technology in both cases. It’s funny how a major jump in technology happens (like the actual invention of the phone). Then there are some refinements over a few years or decades until it gets to a useful stable form. Then it stays virtually the same for many years with only minor innovations. The telephone was virtually unchanged from sometime before I was born until I was about forty. Push-buttons were replacing the rotary dial, but that was about it. (Isn’t it interesting though that when we call someone, we still call it “dialing?” I have never seen a dial on a cell phone.) Cell phones were introduced and (once they became cheap enough) they changed the way we phone each other. New advancements followed soon after, texting and then smart phones. Personal computers were also becoming commonplace and wer...
Post a Comment
Read more