Time is of the essence, or so they say, and time keeps running out. It is funny to say that time runs out, because as many of us know, or at least have been told, time is infinite, so how can it be that we never have enough?
Well, look at space, and what we are told of space and matter. If space is infinite, and the amount of matter is finite, then comparatively speaking, there’s no matter in the world. If you divide any number by infinity, you end up with a zero.
The White Rabbit. From Ryo Ueda's Alice Fantasia, from icie. Time! Time!
Likewise, the problem is not that time is infinite, but rather that we only have a finite amount of time, so we always have no time, because for us, the amount of time, figuratively speaking, is always zero.
Keep reading to see how it all makes sense, and why it is also seasonal!
Of course, that is not the problem, because we do not look at time from that perspective, of looking at our lives compared to the vast stretch of time as a continuum and coming to the realization that our lives take no time, are nothing, on the scale being discussed.
It does show us where the problem does come from, however, and that is one of perspective, of the range we are looking at. We are looking at a week, let us say, and then we say that we do not have time. In the space of a week, we want and sometimes need to get a certain amount of things done, but the time contained within a week is often not enough for us.
Sometimes, especially during summer breaks and long tests-taking periods, where I do not attend school, I often find myself needing to construct my time. An hour, a day, a week, a month, they are not natural units of the world, they like time are a construct of not only our minds, but also of our society. In a way, these social constructs later construct our experiences and the way we perceive the world.
So vacations, or times when I do not have activities that set up my week. So I use the TV schedule. House M.D. is always on Tuesdays, The Office? Wednesdays. And so on and so forth. I will not download these series, because even if something comes out on a certain day, it is much more likely I will postpone watching that than videotape what’s on TV.
In a way, I attune to my TV set, and watching these shows is a ritual. Aside from watching those “Obsession Shows” which I will watch at all costs (but sometimes miss, because I can’t skip an episode, and if I miss one, it cascades onward), but I also attune myself to the Time. I attune myself to where Earth is relevant to the sun, and these are rituals which must be performed time and time again, in order that the connection between myself and the world through time is not severed.
Just like the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, which happens on the 21st of December every year, a day where many cultures try to bring forth the sun, to revive the sun, to revive the earth, and bring forth spring and summer once more.
You may know its current incarnation as “Christmas”.
And so, merry Christmas, happy Yule, or just a nice weekend to you all.
P.S. Channukah was last week.
And yes, I am always out of time these days, and it’d probably be only after this semester ends that I’d return to regular and punctual updates of this blog. I also need to find the time, nay, to make the time to review some figures, watch more anime, etc. but right now there isn’t enough time, time is all but fleeting, and I have so much to do.
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Geekorner-Geekulture. 
Doesn’t it feel like time passes by faster as you get older? I remember 1 year seemed like such a long time when I was a little kid. Now a year passes by pretty quickly.
I think the reason the future seems so big and the past so “small” is often because we cannot imagine the future, and we cannot remember the past. It often occurs to me that the yearly date of someone or other dying comes and I go, “But they only died 2-3 months ago!” because all that is in the past seems to blur and contrast into “the same”, it all happened in roughly the same time-period.
Only using the artificial construct of time, such as our ages, gives us a better estimate, such as, “It happened when I was in the fourth grade.”
Also, I actually thought of the issue you mentioned last week in regards to older people, and I think there’s a hump-back. The older we get, and the busier we get, the less consequential a period of time, say a year, seems to us. But once you get to a certain age, the post 80, let us say, a year is indeed nothing, in the past, but I think a year of the future is quite a long time once more?
We all depend and live according to time. I agree with you, even when I’m free, I’ll always find something to hold on to, something to look forward to and as a result, I end up having a schedule for holidays (when I shouldn’t need any)
Happy Holidays :)
Well, when I have a week off or so, I don’t structure it. But when it becomes 6-8 weeks of unstructured time, the mind buckles. I do not think that our need for time is necessarily apriori, but once constructed on the crucible of time, it is inescapable.
Also, I want some holidays :( I had Channukah last week, true, but once you get out of high school, Channukah is no longer accompanied by days off, except for the poor parents who must entertain their children. Channukah is quite the “Festivals and Shows” week in local culture, but it just happened that way, not for any deeper cultural reasons or anything even seeming to have anything to do with religion.
I hope you enjoy your holidays :)
I really liked this post and it also reminds menor a couple other things I was thinking about regarding time:
you are surely right about time being something fabricated by the human race. “time” is merely something we need to use to keep sane and remember when to watch shows like House M.D. (a decent show I might add). As cliche as it sounds, a “day” is less than the blink of an eye regarding the span of time as experienced by the universe. Hell, light, the fastest thing EVER (that we know of) takes yeaaarrrsssss to travel through certain parts of space…it just blows my mind.
But I guess I’ll get to what really trips me out. Ok, the theory of thermodynamics says energy can be neither created or destroyed – only made into different forms. Mind you, this is accepted globally. So putting aside everyones beliefs for a moment, matter existed FOREVER. lol, isn’t that a thought? So basically like we both pretty much said before, there’s no such thing as time because time requires a beginning and an end. Matter will always exist period. How thought-provoking is that? And supposedly the universe keeps expanding…but that’s another discussion lol.
But anyways, marry late Christmas and happy upcoming new year :)
Light’s speed is currently the upper limit for how fast things go, but current Physical theories say that it’s not the fastest something can be, something can begin faster than light, but once it goes beneath the speed of light, it can no longer surpass it.
Also, matter and energy are not synonymous, and while E=MC^2 gives you a way for one to become the other, while energy in some form will always remain, matter can go away, and can dissipate.
Also, while matter does not diminish, if space does expand, then matter, so to speak, is approaching a ratio of zero compared to the amount of space, whereas before the Big Bang, matter and space were identical, and there was no space, nor time, thus we can’t really speak of the time “before the big bang”, for that is nonsense ;)
Happy holidays, and may we all have a great upcoming year.
I’m never a fan of philosophy, so I’m surprised I actually read this post. I found it helpful to wake up early and use a planner to combat this problem of not having enough time. I found that I get a lot more done when I wake up early (school days) and actually follow my planned schedule than when I wake up in the afternoon (non-school/work days) and have no plan at all. A lot of time is wasted during those days where I just sit in front of the tele and the next thing I know, my day is gone. I’ll try to throw blogging into my schedule for the upcoming semester.
I think while there are things that are classically and stereotypically “Philosophy”, I think in the end Philosophy is not as much topics of debate but a way to address things. I think one could argue that most of my “Things I Like” posts are philosophy, or at least philosophical.
Yeah, my problem is sometimes when I go to sleep at the afternoon, because of the early sun-set times this time of year I wake up when it’s dark outside, and it feels as if the whole day had up and ran away.
Regardless, I sometimes do wake up early and with my mind set to accomplish things, I rarely do, accursed procrastination.
And yes, blog away! :D I’d try to blog more as well, I might throw up an entry later today, I have a couple of ideas actually and I am not sure which one to blog about just yet.
I never have enough time because the time I construct for myself never takes into account of procrastination. This is true even for my “free time”. :(
It’s usually more true for my free time than otherwise. I keep procrastinating blogging, I procrastinate watching anime, reading books… it’s ridiculous.
This post was more on constructing my Time, as in, how I view the world through the lens of time. If I were to share the horror stories of the uber-geek… anime, manga/comic, RPGs, computer games, etc. pick 1 and you have time for it, pick two and you can manage, somehow, pick 6-7 and you’re dead. So I usually shuffle them about, two weeks of this, two weeks of that…
I always plan to accomplish more in my free time that doesn’t take into account that I don’t want my fun time over scheduled. I need to have impulsive fin too. I used to REALLY overplan, but now I’m only off the mark a little. I set my goals very low for last vacation, and I got to nearly everything.
Goal 1 – Clean entire house in time to host Christmas
Goal 2 – Finish a video game I started 1 year ago
Goal 3 – Clean/Organize my Hobby Room
Goal 4 – eBay the random items I don’t need anymore
I accomplished all this in 1.5 weeks! Impressive! I know!
Dammit, you’re making us look bad here!
The sad thing is, the moment I structure something, it’s less likely I’ll do it, rather than more, and since I sometimes structure my free time, well, that ends in tears.
Good job on getting things done :)
And my problem is, it’s not even the “overplan”, to me any plan is something of an overplan, heh.