Time

What is time? It is not something money can buy or something in which you can choose to participate or not. It is the concept that each and every one of us human deals with on a daily basis, 24/7. It is something that can determine our fate and can control our lives. Is time running out with every second passing, every day you live and every moment that passes by? For many, this idea can be confusing as they do not know what to think about time.

But time, the circle on the wall with the ticking hands or the blinking numbers on your bed-side table, is a thing made up by humans. The second, the minute, the hour, what really is it? The only factual part of time is that the year is 365 ¼ days long due to the revolution around the sun, and the day which begins with the rising sun, and the setting sun at the beginning and end of each day. Everything else in between is created by humans, for humans and their own benefits.

Different time zones were created by humans so they can have a universal understanding and measure of time, so one country would not have the sun rising at 7:00 am and another have it rise at 12:00 pm. A weird concept is “time travel,” as travelling from California to Connecticut you are technically “time travelling” with the three hour time difference in America. In essence, a five hour flight gains three hours.

So if you leave CA at 12:00 pm and have to travel the five hour flight, but also the three hour time difference, one travels for eight hours and arrive at CT at 8:00 pm, when it should technically only be 5 hours.

What happened to those three hours? Do they just disappear into nothing or were they nothing to begin with? Those three hours could be spent at a dinner with family, working on an essay for a class, or seeing a movie. But instead they are gone; they are taken, stolen from you, something you can never retrieve.

This loss of time or gaining of time is not “time travel,” but just a dependence upon not your thoughts and beliefs but the clock that’s always ticking and conforming into the beliefs of society.

Many humans go through their lives disregarding this concept that is accepted in this society. They ignore the fact that their jetlag is a repercussion of losing time and not just of the time difference.

Some humans try to change or alter time. Runners try to beat it, pilots try to fly with it and the elderly try to stop it. But every time a human tries to get hold of time, it slips through their fingers. It isn’t something you can tell to stop or slow down. The mother who wants her baby to stay young forever, the procrastinating high school student trying to cram in three hours of work into a couple of minutes, the physics teacher trying to measure time in her Work equations, are all let down, because time is not a movie that can be paused, or music that can be turned off. Is there anything there at all?

Past, present and future often get twisted and mangled up in people’s minds, as they don’t know which is most important, to fix the problems of yesterday, prepare for the future and the fate of your life, or just live the today like there is no tomorrow. Many forget about the present because they take it for granted. Yes, the present is here, right now, but with every second passing, and every time you hope for the time to pass faster or to just “get by” the day, the present slips by and turns into the past, into mere memories. And many memories and small moments go by with no recognition and get forgotten as you grow up or move on.

Why is it that it is human nature to never want to be happy with the present, to never be happy with your current economic status but always want to get bigger and get more? Why is it that humans never want to just relax in time and live but to just recollect and regret their past or hope and dream for the future?

It can be a hard way to live, to stop depending on your strict schedule and the planner in your backpack and the calendar in your pocket but to live truly independent on your own beliefs, thoughts, and creation of your own schedule without having to live in fast forward and not in slow motion.

The experienced time in a person’s life should not depend on the clock time.

So instead of just looking to the future and focusing back on the past; live in the now, the present. Don’t take time for granted because it is flying by, so don’t jump out of the plane and try to stop it, just stay seated and fly with it. Don’t get caught up, by staying on the plane forever. It is ok to look forwards or back once in a while, but the present is the most precious concept in mankind.

Image Courtesy of palmsartgallery.com