Blips in Time
“Is time relative, or just the same for you and me?
Time is a funny thing. While consistent in theory, my attitude towards time shifts as often as the temperature, ranging from adoration, anger, longing, and the ever-so-frequent wishing I had more.
There are moments when I begin to question my understanding of time altogether. Not necessarily in the way of being late for work or what time a clock reads, but in a more abstract and overarching sense. If I consider it too much, I work myself into a tizzy and semi-existential crisis, ending in a grappling with whether things matter at all.
Part of this is rooted in a lack of understanding, in the sense that I don’t fully understand how time, as a concept, came to be. Why do we approach time as constant in a world that’s ever-changing and evolving? Wouldn't time be evolving with us?
In an attempt to further understand time as a concept, I first consulted the dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary describes time as the following:
“The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.”
The sentence makes sense to me from a grammatical standpoint, but it doesn’t completely align with my understanding of time. The definition gives the sense that time is reliant on events in the past, present, and future. Given that individuals harbor different experiences that translate to different pasts, presents, and futures, then, if abiding by the dictionary’s definition, everyone's concept of time would differ, right? That’s my thinking, at least.
I recognize that this may be considered rather juvenile or maybe even a naive deliberation, but I think I’m okay with that. For better or worse, this is where my brain lives sometimes, and in the hopes of better understanding these thoughts, I’ve taken it upon myself to word-vomit within this forum. These are my blips in time.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a7/7f/eb/a77febce4a63c9b32e11e2e99a05c8c5.jpg
I should clarify that I am not wholly interested in the philosophical development of time from a curiosity standpoint, but more so for selfish reasons. As mentioned before, my attitude towards time shifts quite frequently. I do my best not to attach myself to my feelings, but there are certain moments where it’s impossible not to.
More recently, probably because I’m in a season of change, I have yearned for time more than normal, longing for times from the past. I cling to the memories tightly, doing my best to stretch them as far as they’ll go without sparing any details. If I could, I would reach into my brain, clasping my hands around my hippocampus, ensuring all of my memories are trapped inside.
Memories can be tricky. Immediately after something happens, you can recall every teeny tiny detail. The smells, sounds, and even taste of scenarios are fresh, allowing you to relive the memory with minimal details lost. As time progresses, the memory becomes less sharp. Maybe the smells aren’t as pungent, or you can't quite place the sounds, but the core pieces of the memory are the same. It’s as if you have a cup full of water, but the faucet is still running. The cup remains full, but the water you once had has been replaced with a stream of new water, thus tainting the original glass you had before. The details fade one by one, leaving only the slight recollection of a time that once was. The edges of the memory are no longer sharp, but rounded out instead.
I resent this so, so, so much.
There are no times I wish I had a photographic memory more than when things are good. Sometimes I don’t even know how good things are until they’re gone. I suppose that’s why things don’t last forever, so you can understand how good you really had it. Some of the best times in my life aren’t tied to anything particularly big. The moments are not necessarily life-changing or world-shattering, but they are moments where time stood still. The world continued to move about, but I and my world were still.
In these moments, I found there was no movement except for the slight squeeze of a lover's hand intertwined with mine, the trees rustling as I walked alongside classmates, and noise was void except for my own voice as I gushed to a friend about a crush. These are moments I long for, moments I long to hold close and bottle up away from elsewhere. I am selfish with these, my stillness. They are mine, virgin to the world outside of my brain. But as I said before, time is funny.
While time is still for me, there are those around who can’t seem to slow it down. People always say school years fly by, but no one believes it until it happens to them. Babies get older, their small feet doubling in size in the blink of an eye. Time moves fast. I struggle to grasp that dichotomy, the idea that two things can be true: time is both fast and slow. As of now, I struggle to decide which pace I want to lean into. Granted, the ideal is to simply be, but when some are moving fast and others slow, finding balance in the midst is less than simple.
But perhaps this is what the Oxford Dictionary was alluding to. Time is different for us, us being you and me. Our season of life shapes how we perceive its movement. While we may find ourselves aligned from time to time, misalignment is inevitable.
I suppose there is truth in both the fast and slow. Two things can be true, after all.
-A well traveled time traveler