According to physics Time is defined by its measurement: time is what a clock reads. In classical, non-relativistic physics it is a scalar quantity and, like length, mass, and charge, is usually described as a fundamental quantity. Time can be combined mathematically with other physical quantities to derive other concepts such as motion, kinetic energy and time-dependent fields. Timekeeping is a complex of technological and scientific issues, and part of the foundation of recordkeeping, yet no physicist, past or present can ever claim to have seen, heard or touched time. So as physicists are wont to do, they would explain it in scientific terms, no surprise then that a departing fisherman would count time as starting when he leaves the shore and being completed when he sees the same shore again? Still, we don’t exactly have a handle of this concept that rules our lives with an “iron clock?”
The Einsteinian concept of time defines it as self-evident. An hour consists of a certain number of minutes, a day of hours and a year of days. But we rarely think about the fundamental nature of time. Time is passing non-stop, and we follow it with clocks and calendars. Yet we cannot study it with a microscope or experiment with it. And it still keeps passing. We just cannot say what exactly happens when time passes. Time is represented through change, such as the circular motion of the moon around Earth. The passing of time is indeed closely connected to the concept of space. According to the general theory of relativity, space, or the universe, emerged in the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. Before that, all matter was packed into an extremely tiny dot. That dot also contained the matter that later came to be the sun, the earth and the moon — the heavenly bodies that tell us about the passing of time. Before the Big Bang, there was no space or time, of course, there’s still hardly proof of this because we lack the instruments to measure such ephemeral concepts. Put simply, we’re looking at time backwards, or as it happens, one snapshot at a time, excuse the pun. We are also observing decay around us and therefore deduce the concept of time.
But this is what still others have to say about time:
“Time is the wisest counsellor of all” – Pericles
“Time brings all things to pass” – Aeschylus
“Time waits for no one” – Folklore
“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late” – William Shakespeare
“Time is money” – Benjamin Franklin
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“Punctuality is the thief of time” – Oscar Wilde
So here’s a different way to perceive or look at time? Time is a set of fixed limitations placed on all our lives. Time is also an unlimited number of opportunities contained within these boundaries. Imagine a string of boxes placed linearly and strung one after the other in an almost endless stream until you lose sight of the last few boxes? Each of us is restricted by two things, we cannot breach the boundary in front of us, and neither can we climb the boundary behind us. Once you move on to the next box, you forfeit all the opportunities contained in the one behind you, no matter how you may feel or the moments of regret you may experience, it can never go back, this restriction time doesn’t allow apropos, our lived realities, or how we experience time. This is how we should imagine it simply because the human brain cannot compute abstracts. This metaphor represents your life. The endless opportunities within each box have a limited “shelf life” or shall we say “box life?” so going into the New Year, which every tribe, culture and creed celebrate, let us be mindful of our universal limitations, without being blind to the opportunities that challenge us, daily folks…..
Have a successful New Year and may 2020 be the year that finally found you……
