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Wednesday, November 13, 2013

What is time?

     The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines time as  " the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues" or "the thing that is measured as seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, etc."  Both these definitions are true. Neither one is very helpful (or satisfying) when discussing time. Our definition of time could be stated as "the inexorable pull of nature toward the destruction of self" which sounds pretty negative (if not suicidal) to say the least. But it is true that each moment we live is one less moment we will continue to exist, (at least in a physical state, we can make no assumptions about what happens after the destruction of our psyche.) Is the fact that time is fleeting our reason for focus in life? If we keep our awareness of the passing of time sharply in our mind do we at least in some small way slow it's passing. Or does the juggernaut of time simply carry us along in a mad rush to the end of our existence? We at The Crazy have felt time crawling slowly (being made to watch reality television can be a particularly painful time slowing event) or whiz by (it seems when we are enjoying ourselves in any way time seems to fly by at hypersonic speed). Sadly we may never know. One thing is certain. Time cannot be altered at will. The arrow of time moves in only one direction. Or so all past history seems to show. And though we are all time travelers none of us will ever be able to travel to the past (except in our minds of course) and relive those events.  Just a quick note on time. Ciao for now.

2 comments:

  1. You can see the past as astronomers often do - since the light we see from stars, such as supernovas, are sometimes hundreds, if not thousands of light years away. Thus those events have actually happened a real long time ago.

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    1. I find it interesting that we really don't know what the Universe looks like right now. The nearest star to earth (other than our sun of course) is Proxima Centauri. We are seeing that star from four years ago. (A little more than four actually)

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