Look back to all the exciting and unexciting times in your life. Did it not seem that those times that were exciting and fun flew by as a fleeting moment. On the other hand, those of the more unexciting times such as waiting in line at the DMV or sitting through a tedious lecture seem to drag on forever. Also, think about when you become cognizant of the time, looking at the clock often in an attempt to accelerate the passing time, but always to no avail. Then, as you look back to all those times, you realize all the years that have passed in your life and wonder where all the time went, all those memories feel like vague dreams.
Time seems to be a cruel force in our lives. It knocks us around and does not give us anytime for relief. Bad times always seem to last much longer than good times. One hour to a person having the time of their life would seem a lot shorter to them in comparison to another person looking at paint dry for an hour, yet they both experience an hour of time. As Bryan Mendez asks in his article, "Time Travel: There's no Time Like Yesterday": "We have a belief that time exists independent of us, but is it perhaps only something that is measured by our minds' and bodies' perceptions?" Time is a topic of human obsession. It permeates our mathematics - as seen in Einstein's theories of special and general relativity (Mendez) - our society, and our personal lives. We love to reminisce about the past and anticipate the future, but the past and future do not exist as is discussed in the podcast, "Hugh Mellor On Time."
The tenses that we use in our language - past, present and future - are not actually part of time (Mellor). We use these tenses as a means of categorizing what has happened, is happening and will be happening to us. Time is actually comprised of events that have occurred earlier than what is happening in this instance as well as those events that happen after this moment (Mellor). We feel that we need to organize the sequence of time in order to understand the sequence of our lives. If I simply stated that I ate a salad earlier than the moment I am currently in, then that leaves a lot of context out. Instead, I would say I ate a salad for lunch around noon today. There is more detail in the latter description. Then, let's say I had pasta for dinner in the evening. Now I have an order to how my day is going. It is becoming a sequence of events, a timeline on which my life is following. This timeline is particular to me and no one else, so when I feel time going faster or slower in certain situations, I am perceiving the pace of my timeline. It is individual to everyone and it is the basis for everyone's storyline, of how they sequence their life from birth until the current moment that they are describing their life to you when you first meet.
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ReplyDeleteSo I just wrote an absolutely brilliant response to this post (including references to the Puppet Interlude) and Blogger kicked me out. So I signed in again and sent the above "Testing . . ." message and will hereby try again.
ReplyDeleteYour post is full of great insights. Let's look at your last paragraph, though. Are you arguing that the perception of time is only individual or personal? Surely that can't be true as "around noon" is generally understood by English-speakers to mean roughly the same thing (although adding B.S. for "Before Salad" might cause some confusion). It seems more likely, given the content of the entire post, that you're arguing that the perception of the rate at which time passes is personal. But do we really remember things that way? Last week's class might have seemed like it went on forever, but unless that becomes the norm you're unlikely to remember the class for the way time seemed to pass while you sat in Macy 110. Or do you really remember your life in terms of how quickly (or not) things seemed to happen? An interesting perspective and one that I'll ask my kids about at dinner tonight . . .