Time

We live in a fast-paced society where a college student’s full course meal comes in three-minute instant noodle cups and thirty-minute fast food deliveries. But there are instances that time moves slow in our fast-moving society, like a bored student sitting in class listening to random rants about math.

Fast-paced, three-minute, three days—It used to be just day and night but now it comes down to the microsecond. Time in its vagueness has been inclined to measurement in definition and idea. I think that because of this general thought that society has absorbed as a mind set, people as they are tend to think of time as inclined to life spans and as means of measuring individuals.

We retort to sayings such as “Life is short,” “Patience is a virtue,” “YOLO”—all supposedly intended to explain time’s worth during our bodily state in the least possible number of words. For us practical men, time is something to be consumed in order to gain more. I think that people are so obsessed with their bodily state that they keep on wanting extensions. The reason why people cram, study, work, and other daily activities is to live more. Work hard for today to ensure tomorrow then do the same the next day. It forms a sort of cycle which sometimes eludes us from what we really want to do—a sort of “time pressure.”

This “time pressure” deceives and eludes us into thinking that we have this kind of limit. A state of mind boundary that gives us a feeling that everything in this world has an ending and there is an involuntary thought counting to the greatest number possible and what we do is we think by the numbers. For example, a student studying in the campus library in preparation of an exam an hour before, let’s say, 1:30pm as scheduled. It makes the student think of how much he has left and how much more he needs to learn with accordance to a limit.

If viewed in a bigger picture, man focuses too much on endings that they would rather live for tomorrow than live today. Life is perceived in a limited time frame where the present is made for a beautiful ending but I, like most of us maybe, would rather prefer the latter. We are so consumed in the thought of being limited that we value time in its essence thus precedes to our conscious actions and steps as if everything was scheduled in a manner and each microsecond has its appointment.

There are some that are blind from this state of “limitation” and does not carry any thought at all. Maybe, the reason why they don't is that they like to think that time is something that is not to be consumed but to be treasured and because of that certain action we live for the moment. Now back to the accountancy student. Let's say that instead of cramming the deal out of his remaining hour he instead selected other numerous applicable books. If you think of it, he's not that prepared for his accounting exam but has learned a great deal of other relevant things. Instead of focusing to the 1:30pm limit, the student instead gave justice to the well-spent hour. Was it worth it that he came unprepared for the exam? If his goal was to learn then yes it was worth it.

Time also affects our mind set in defining people. Age in general can tell most of who and what a person is or maybe perceived as what he is supposed to be in the society. Educational level is also proportionate to the length of time you have consumed. It also labels you on where you are supposed to be with correspondence to your age. There are some that redefines the whole age and educational level’s proportionality by being termed “advanced” or a “late bloomer”, but in general, age and educational level is commonly friends of the same feather. Sometimes I think this sort of grouping is somehow ineffective. Maybe instead of grouping students by age or year level, we group them according to ability. The idea that just because the student is fifteen years old they’re ready for trigonometry is weird and I think no other part of human society groups themselves this way because it artificially slows down the best of the brightest.

Age is also inevitable with experience. Not in specific numbers but within different range in such a way that society developed classifications or life phases such as “childhood,” “teenage,” “young adulthood,” “midlife,” “elder hood,” and so on. As a child you are defined as naive and ignorant of all things big and relevant while teenage is a rebellious phase with raging hormones cursing whatever the system implements.

Every phase you are expected to do things and are defined by it, where of course age is essential in order to categorize one self under the classifications. Because of being categorized in a phase, you are limited to what you are allowed to do. When you are a child your parents get to choose for you, like in a grocery store when you do the walk of shame after your mom said no. That is because they are absorbed to the thought of your ignorance thus thinking that you are unable to decide for yourself. It somehow measures your knowledge on academics in particular. It gives you an overview what to learn on what specific age. It is altogether biased in a systematic way.

What if time never existed? What then? Would we stop degenerating? Would everything suddenly freeze like the one they show on televisions? Or we continue living but without the numbers? In a scientific perspective, according to Frederick Turner:

|”We can actually study situations where time almost doesn’t exist.  In the tiny and always minutely brief world of quantum mechanics there is so little time that identity and location do indeed lose a good deal of their clarity and indeed their distinction from one another: a particle can exist in a state of superposition, in which two different things are true of the same object, and it can exist very tenuously in two places at once.  But for objects with more solidity and persistence, time is necessary not just tautologically for them to exist “in” but also as a way of resolving paradoxes of being and location.  Another place where time almost doesn’t exist is in black holes, where it is only their slow leakage and eventual unlocking that prevents paradoxes such as that information can be destroyed (a contradiction of identity) and that two things can be in the same place (black holes can be almost infinitely dense with matter).”

Frederick Turner believes in the thought that time makes sure everything doesn't happen at once and that the universe does not allow two states of the same object occupy exactly the same state and place because the principle of identity is violated and thus major problems may arise.

“In a universe of pure space, without time, the laws of science could not exist because identity and location could not be reliably established.”

Reading his phrase I thought that the relation between time and us human beings is a two way-process. Time defines us and gives us a sort of identity which is the fundamental basis of the laws of science. Without it, our identity and everything about what we thought was solid and true cannot really be created. But how about our existence? Can time have the superficial power of eradicating mankind?

I honestly cannot tell yet, nor any of you can. But as the physicist Arthur Eddington put it, the universe is not so much like a vast machine as like a vast thought. And Time is the milieu of that thought.