I have long been fascinated by ‘time’. I place that word in inverted commas to emphasise the ‘concept of time’. What we call ‘time’. What is it? When the pub landlord calls “Time”, that’s a very different thing. That’s not it.
Grandfather clock time. The subtle characteristics of the clockwork mechanism my father religiously kept wound up, winding the key every three days, which is now my task, listening to the rhythm of the tick, and the tock, there in my ears when I listen, and in my subconscious when not. And the chimes, on the hour, day in day out. Reminding me.
I have many books on the subject of time. For instance the books about Harrison’s chronometer to keep track of time and thus calculate longitude and the seafarers position on the globe. And not get shipwrecked. Incredible precision and technology for the time. Or books on the theoretical physics of time. How it is measured. The history of time. Why is a second a second? Why is a second and minute and hour base 60? Why? I think I know why ‘base 60’ but that’s for another day. Have you thought about how time is measured? Have you?
Today, as I write this, it is my fathers 125th birthday were he alive. He lived in, or came, from another time. But that is still not what I mean by ‘what is time’? No.
What is time?
The arrow of time goes in one direction. Entropy, the breaking down of all matter only has one direction — to be broken down even more. Hot goes to cold. Solid goes to dust. Dreams fade. Entropy moves to the ever lower denominator. To an ever decreasing state of being. Towards absolute zero. It doesn’t go the other way. The 2nd law of thermodynamics. It’s sort of common sense. But Time? What does time do? Can time oppose the arrow of entropy?
Can time move in another direction. Can we experience phase shifts. Dimensional shifts dependent on decisions taken at any given instantaneous moment taking us along other roads less traveled. Can we move inter-dimensionally through perceptional phases? Do we know we have moved through a phase. Through time?
The grandfather clock ticks a second but what is it marking? Yes, a second of ‘time’. But what is time?
The Arrow Of Time, or perhaps the Arrow Of Entropy, apparently can only move in one direction. Are they the same? Can they be separated? Entropy breakdown is a separate physical reality from time, whereas time is purely perceptual. I think. But is it?
How long has the civilised human lived on the earth? 6000 years? 10,000 years? The Sumerians were the first, we are told. The dinosaurs left Earth 65 million years ago.
That’s a big gap.
How long for traces of a previous civilisation to be obliterated and no remnant left to witness? Have you thought about that? Well, apparently it’s 1.2 million years. So between the Sumerians and the dinosaurs there’s a fair few civilisations that are theoretically possible to have come and gone.
There’s a hole in Darwinism. The ‘missing link’ you will have heard it described as. The jump from chimp to human has not been made, anthropologically. It’s merely theory. A model.
How old is the universe? 13.5 Billion years we are told. When was earth ‘born’? 4.5 Billion years ago we are told. Have you thought about how big ‘a billion’ is? It’s unfathomable.
But that’s a big gap.
Can you contemplate that gap?
Was time born at the start of the big bang?
Where did the big bang come from? A zero point? A random moment of nothing from which everything emerged?
But what about before that moment? Think about it. You can feel it. Try to feel it. Work through it and feel, as you stroke, that before the instantaneous moment of creation there was already time.
There was Time before Creation.
What is time?
Listening to music, as an analogy, you can only hear music in a forward motion, from beat to forward beat, through the psychological thought movement we unintentionally create that is time. We move from moment to moment. Beat to beat. Music needs forward progression. But music also too solidifies a past memory in that moment of that time of our lives. Time connects. Time is instantaneous.
What is time — is it a vertical shaft or a horizontal tunnel? Up, down, left, right?
How do we move back through ‘time’. Why do we, as physical entities, collide and cross personal time lines? Where do we all, all the 8 billion of us, fit.
Relativistic travel lenses time relative to the viewer at light speed. So what is time? Time is local. Time is total.
Seconds Minutes Hours Weeks.
When you are swimming stop thinking about distance, think about time. Time well spent. Sacrifice time, maximise comfort.
Complete the task. It’s just you out there.
