Time

tkscovill ♦ February 16, 2018 ♦ Leave a comment

“Time doesn’t exist. Clocks exist. Time is just an agreed upon construct. We have taken distance (one rotation of the earth and one orbit of the sun) divided it up into segments, then given those segments labels. While it has its uses we have been programmed to live our lives by this construct as if it were real. We have confused our shared construct with something that is tangible and thus have become its slave.”

I borrowed this from Facebook. It triggered quite a bit of pondering. I like clocks and watches, and guessing how long something will take. I also like numbers, especially when the digital numbers are all the same, like 11:11 or 2:22. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and guess what time it is. Usually I am within five minutes of the exact time. It’s a blessing and a curse, having a clock in your head.

Here’s a conversation I had with my brother on this subject:

ME: Sometimes I wonder exactly what it means to HAVE time. Really? All we HAVE is NOW. It is always NOW, no matter what the clock says. Yet, I, too, am a slave to the clock (and the calendar) someTIMES.

ME, later: This would be a good blog post.

BROTHER: Yes it would, if you have the TIME.

ME: I’ll find the TIME. But not NOW. Later.

And there’s the problem. Later. Not NOW.

Sigh.