“I didn’t invent the time machine to win at gambling. I invented a time machine to travel through time.” – Back to the Future 2
I have two dogs, Rolex® and Timex™. They are watchdogs.
Preface: I got home very late, so, here’s a Lame Repost. See you with a great new post on Monday.
Time.
Of things that have long fascinated me, time is at the top of the list. Even when I was a little kid, time fascinated me.
The idea that time, of all of the physical parameters of the world there was the one that we couldn’t control. Humanity has mastered the power of the atom, at least partially. We haven’t tamed fusion, but we can create it, and have several fewer islands in the Pacific because of it.
Humanity has dammed the largest of rivers, giving us power. We have used technology to shrink the world. The first recorded circumnavigation of the world took 1082 days. Magellan didn’t quite make the whole trip, but he still gets the credit on a technicality.
Now? The International Space Station does an orbit in 90 minutes or so at 17,150 miles per hour, which is nearly as fast as Haitians are entering Texas.
Humanity has conquered the riddle of steel – we’ve made steel buildings that reach upwards into the sky to please Crom. We have conquered climate – people live at the South Pole in perfect comfort, as well as managing to live in Houston without melting into puddles of sweat.
Batman® couldn’t solve the riddle of steel, but he could name the worst riddle: being riddled with bullets.
We can see at night. We can talk, nearly instantly, with people a continent away.
My phone buzzes every time there is motion outside my front door – it’s like having a superpower of sensing where and when there is activity at a distance. Another superpower is being able to access obscure facts anywhere on the planet that can reach a cell signal.
But time remains fixed. It flows only one way. And it is the most subjective of our senses. Even Pugsley notices it: “This summer was so short!”
He’s in high school. That’s when the transition from the endless summers of childhood begin to transform into the fleeting, never-ending carousel of years that is adulthood.
Best thing about being in Antifa® is that you never have to take off work to protest.
I’ve long felt that I understood why this was. Let me give it a shot.
For a newborn, the second day it’s outside and breathing is 50% of its entire life. For a six-year-old, half of their life is three years – much more. It’s not a big percentage, but it’s much smaller than 50%. For a sixteen-year-old, half their life is eight years.
If you’re forty – half your life is twenty years. 1/8 versus 1/20? It’s amazingly different. We don’t perceive life as a line. We’re living inside of it – we compare our lives to the only thing we have . . . our lives. Each day you live is smaller than the last.
But that’s not everything.
As we age, novelty decreases. When we’re young, experiences and knowledge are coming at us so quickly that we are presented with novel (new and unique) information daily. New words. New thoughts. New ideas. That’s why babies keep falling for that stupid “got your nose” thing. They don’t realize that I can reattach it.
Three clowns were eating a cannibal. One clown says, “I think we started this joke wrong.”
Over time, though, novelty decreases, as does the percentage of your life that each day represents. Ever drive a new route somewhere? When I do it, I have to focus my attention. It seems like it takes longer because I’m having to deal with novelty.
I’ve had my “new” laptop nearly seven years. I had my old laptop for longer than that, yet my “new” laptop still seems like it’s temporary.
There are only so many routes I can drive to work, so much novelty that I can find in a daily drive. Even a commute of an hour begins to fade into a brief moment in time if it’s the same commute, day after day.
Work is similar. Over time, we gain experience. Experience shows us how to fix problems (and sometimes how not to fix them). But that experience of taking a solution and modifying it to fix the next problem isn’t as hard as fixing the first problem.
The fact that each day is a smaller portion of my life, combined with the fact that as I get older, the possibility that I see something new dims. I’ve solved a bunch of problems in my life. Finding a new one is . . . difficult.
Life goes faster, day by day for me. Every endless summer day of youth is in my rearview mirror.
And yet . . .
Each day is still 24 hours. I can still use each day and live it with all of the gusto of a 10-year-old fishing for trout after building a tree fort, playing with his dog, and building a model of a Phantom F-4 to dogfight with the MiG 21-PF already hanging from the ceiling.
They did not see that coming.
Even though those 24 hours seem shorter now than at any time in my life, they are relentless in their exact sameness. I get to choose how I spend those moments in my life. I get to choose what I want to produce, and how hard I work to make it happen.
Humanity may never have the ability to crack time – it appears that even today, outside of sands falling from an hourglass, we can only describe time as a fundamental entity, something we measure against.
Does the flow of time vary? Certainly. But only if we’re moving at large fractions of the speed of light or are caught in a huge gravity well, but let’s leave your mother out of this.
Gravity is just a social construct invented by an English Christian to keep you down.
I have come to the conclusion that I will likely never understand what, exactly, time is, outside of this:
Time is all we have – it is what makes up life. We measure our lives in it, because no man can buy an extra hour of life. We have the hours we have. The only difference is what we do with that time.
I mentioned in a previous post that (during the week) I often get by on scant hours of sleep. That’s because I have more things that I want to do in my life than I can fit in a day that’s less than 20 or 22 hours some days.
I choose to try to do more, to try to make use of this time, because each moment is a gift.
Maybe I can settle for that definition of time: a gift. Each moment is a gift.
Don’t beg for more, or live in fear of losing them. Just make each moment count.
Perhaps that’s the secret and precious nature of time. It is the one thing we should never waste, and never wish away.
That whole thing about time going by faster the older you get is scarily true. I remember counting down the months to seeing my favorite band (Porcupine Tree) live in Boston; that was two years ago this month. Yikes.
Someone gave me great advice years ago and that was to make major life changes every 3 to 4 years as a way to “bookmark” one’s life. This provides reference points so that it is much easier to remember and catalog past events (and when one can remember details, then time doesn’t feel like it is going so fast).
We do this intrinsically when we are young in that we change schools every few years and then either go to college/work/military, get married etc. But by mid 30’s, most people have “settled down” and stay in the same life and job for decades and then it becomes one big blur. I think this is why so many people in mid-life feel like time is speeding up.
The wife and I decided to try and make major changes every few years to help make things more memorable. We’re coming up on the 4 yr mark soon and she just introduced me to her new boyfriend….
D
And it gets faster yet.
And as long as we’re taking time-travel walks down memory lane, here’s my personal conspiracy theory take on Election2020. At the time, I actually emailed this document to every newspaper editor in Georgia, every Republican Georgia State legislator, and the GBI. I never heard back from any of them. And if you click on the link in my document for the original YouTube source video I got those screengrabs from…poof, it’s gone.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wy48OytZO8Jg2DTf7GeXnVSMkaya6giw/view?usp=sharing
The memory hole is deep, and they want you to forget.
“Time and tide flow wide, but fruit flies like a banana.”
— Herman Melville
I used a “relativity” loophole to make my cello sound like a violin. Yes, it IS possible to control time. Think not? Just ask any smart-alecky musician or sound-engineer. True story…
https://youtu.be/7YdWbFyXYyA?si=NpZeCCDCE8n12cJs
Old Herman could write him some short stories.
Now that’s cool!
It’s a hurried up life
But it’s the life I choose
No use in asking me to slow down
Cause I got nothing to lose
But time and time is all I’ve got
-BTO Rock is my life
Now, don’t hang on
Nothin’ lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won’t another minute buy
– Kansas Dust in the Wind
Yes. Dust, wind, dude.
Yet oddly enough much of our economic output and innovation is designed specifically to find new and exciting ways to waste time.
Only when you’re old and you want the hours to fly quick.
And ways to profit from it.
While we’re on the subject of time, here’s a fun trip down memory lane to 9/11.
The current issue of Science magazine has a cover story by MIT researchers on using AI chatbots to deprogram conspiracy theorists.
https://www.science.org/toc/science/385/6714
The article is deemed so important that it’s not behind the usual paywall. Here it is:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq1814
Check out the last AI-generated paragraph in Figure 1. The AI is lying to the conspiracy theorist to change his views. There were zero Iraqi attackers on 9/11.
Even CNN got this right, proving that CNN is (very slightly) more truthful that AI:
https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11th-hijackers-fast-facts/index.html
I have a new conspiracy theory: “They” are lying to us to tailor our beliefs!
That, Ricky, is not a theory. It is a conspiracy, however. Conspiracies are otherwise known as ‘history’.
Yes.
I’ve always found it a supreme irony. Sad to boot. The one thing we will never have enough of is the one thing we waste the most of.
Except when I’m writing for you folks.
Einstein theorized a unified field theory, but ran out of time to figure it out…or maybe not.
He married his cousin. Even his marriage was relative.
Time may be running out…the most important (and ignored) story today:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/12/us/politics/biden-ukraine-weapons.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-informs-un-security-council-direct-war-nato-assured-if-us-approves-long-range
Yes, and at some point Russian long-range missiles might end up with the Houthis, for instance.
Beautiful as always.
However, a bit of unsolicited advice: look into the impact of those 4h of sleep a night… you’re not going to produce more, you’re borrowing time from your future self. All those famous people that burned the candle at both ends got alzheimers early. Good sleep is as important as good food!
Thank you again, I’m looking forward to your posts!
Bob, I’ve recently (2024) started attempting to get at least 6 hours a night. It is better.
That… “Was a good one”
Thank you.
That bartender is the right spitting image of my old military buddy Phil, out of Bentonville, Arkansas, where he still lives to this day. No he don’t like Walmart, not one bit. Yes his hair would be receding now.
Dayum he’d even get looks like that on his face when I scheduled him for dayshift (dayum he HATED dayshift) on the hospital ward where I was NCOIC.
Recalled him so much I just tried to contact him. Not an easy thing given where I live these days. The Lord works in strange and mysterious ways no joke, but then again I can do strange and mysterious and that ain’t a joke either.
Heheheh, good luck finding him!
John, thank you so much for this meditation. The idea of time passing without attention and the need to reinvent ourselves to pay attention is something very much on my mind at the moment.
Yes, at some point the clock will hit the two-minute warning . . .
Used to think it was all a matter of relativity (ie age versus time spent alive) but now not quite sure. There’s a lot of puddles of Dark Matter scattered around the universe (some say 90 per cent of its mass) and things might slow down appreciably when our part of the galaxy tries to wade through them. That happens and of course time speeds up. This may explain why the once-a-week taking out the garbage task now seems to occur every 3.6 days
Exactly!!!!