What Time Do You Have?

Picture from Microsoft Clipart

 

Time is fascinating because it is limited - a scarce resource - or so we think! The most common refrain one hears is "I don't have time!" This may be for work, recreation, or just plain living. When you ask someone what the time is, you will get an amazing range of answers. As Alexander Pope says - "T is with our judgments as our watches — none, Go just alike, yet each believes his own."

The world time can be found here at www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/. This is a cool place to go to see what the comparative time is in Europe or Asia. Mankind has always been fascinated with time, and archeologists believe the oldest record of keeping time are on cave walls, and were designed 20,000 years ago.

My clients always ask if I have time to see them.  Usually I do, however, it may not be in the same time slot they originally requested.  Or, sometimes a friend will call, and say, "Do you have time to talk?"  It seems that we have so little time ourselves that we expect that others will not have time for us as well.  How did that happen?  How did we come to a place where we do not have time for ourselves and for each other?  Is it because time is now equated with money? 

If that is the case, then time should be unlimited.  Money is a concept, just as time is.  Money can be minted and printed without limit. Whether it is tied to a silver or gold or some other standard really makes little difference.  Physicists are learning all the time that that "time" is not the property that we thought it was.  Physics has proven a concept called " Relativistic time dilation" which basically states that two people may see the same event, and the two people might be different distances from the event, the light will travel at the same speed for both people, even if the distance for one is greater.  The person closest to the event will observe that the event is slower than the person farther away.  (If you want to explore this further, see the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia's Physics web page at www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/js/text_module4.htm)

Whether time is limited or not, it seems that we all can find real time wasters.  Hate and anger and revenge are three things that people let take up much of their thoughts and their time.  Emily Dickinson sums up why one should have no time to hate....

I had no time to hate, because
by Emily Dickinson

I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.
Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.

Well, I have to go!  My time is up!

Judy