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 1/70^th 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).