. . .fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run . . .Rudyard Kipling
The measurement of time is a constant in our lives. We struggle to control it or to spend it wisely. We keep ourselves busy tracking it down to the digital micro-second. Time informs how we view the world and how we record the events of our lives. We judge our activities on how much time something takes. If a You Tube video lasts longer than 3 minutes, we hesitate before hitting that triangle. Is this video worth my next 3 minutes? But if the video counter hovers around the magic 1 minute mark, we hit play. After all, it’s only 1 minute.
What’s interesting to me about all of this – besides the question of when did 3 minutes become a long time? -- is that measuring time is a human-made construct. The Earth has been orbiting the sun 4 + billion years. For the majority of that “time”, humanity hasn’t been around to clock Earth’s passage around the sun. Using a human-oriented time analogy, if the life-span so far of the earth were compressed into 24 human hours, we would show up on the planet in the last 4 seconds before midnight. We’ve been here way less than that magic 1 minute. Bottom line, the Earth has been doing just fine orbiting the Sun without the use of our clocks – either digital, analog, sundial, or hour glass.
TIME IS POWER
So why do we measure time? Power. Once the agricultural revolution took hold and human cultures shifted from hunting and gathering to planting and harvesting, it became increasingly important to understand the rhythms of the Earth’s voyage around the sun. Measuring time helps answer the question: When is the best time to plant your crop in order to yield a good harvest? Is it when the time of sunlight is equal to the time of darkness? Or is it when the time of sunlight is almost double the time of darkness? How many full moons will appear and disappear before the cold and darkness changes to light and warmth?
Whoever masters the optimum planting time, masters feeding their tribe. Whichever tribe is better fed, is the tribe which controls the most resources. Whichever tribe controls the most resources is the one with the most power.
TIME IS ARBITRARY
The idea of using a calendar is human-created and society-centric. The Mayans calculate time according to the cycles of the moon and their new year occurs in the month called July in Western civilization. We get our idea of a seven day week from the Babylonians, who connected the sequence of sunrise and sunset to their major seven gods who were connected to seven heavenly bodies. In the Hindu calendar, the day starts with the sunrise. According to the Jewish religion and the ancient Druids, the day started at sunset. It wasn’t until 1532, when Copernicus released his work on heliocentrism, that the idea of the Earth orbiting the Sun rather than the other way around became a mainstream thought. The calendars became more sophisticated. In 1751, an effort to match up the two major calendars being used in Western Civilization, England declared that year to be only 282 days long, running from March 25th to December 31st. The year 1752 started on January 1st instead of the previous New Year’s Day of March 25th. To complete the process, another adjustment had to be made later in 1752. The month of September was shortened by eleven days. The people of England went to bed on Wednesday September 2nd and woke up on Thursday September 14th.
TIME IS NOT CONSTANT
As we increase our ability to measure time down to the millisecond by the use of Cesium atoms, we’ve realized our planet doesn’t stick to the same 24 hour clock like we assumed. Our planet is a vibrant, ever changing entity. The Earth can gain and lose time – albeit only microseconds – whenever there is a major earthquake. Between the Indonesia mega-thrust earthquake in 2004, the Chilean earthquake of 2010, and the Japanese earthquake of 2011, the earth has lost 6 micro-seconds from its day. Clocking that 1 minute video isn’t quite as accurate as we think.
TIME IS SUBJECTIVE
Time slows when you are doing something which interests you. Time is short when you are late for a meeting. Time is crucial when the game clock says 5 seconds and your team is behind one basket. It’s all about perception.
This blog isn’t a judgment of how we live our lives in the 21st century. I’m simply noticing that our relationship to time changes, well, over time. How Copernicus related to time in the 1500s, or how we related to it before the advent of the atomic clock, no longer serves us. With the recent advances in quantum physics, I expect our relationship to time will evolve even more in the next 20 years.
The take- away from all of this is that most important thing is to be in the moment. Our awareness of the moment is the only thing we can control. In that one moment, we build the rest of our lives.
So, the next time you worry that you are out of time or that you don’t have enough time, relax. Be in the moment. We made all the rest up anyway.
The measurement of time is a constant in our lives. We struggle to control it or to spend it wisely. We keep ourselves busy tracking it down to the digital micro-second. Time informs how we view the world and how we record the events of our lives. We judge our activities on how much time something takes. If a You Tube video lasts longer than 3 minutes, we hesitate before hitting that triangle. Is this video worth my next 3 minutes? But if the video counter hovers around the magic 1 minute mark, we hit play. After all, it’s only 1 minute.
What’s interesting to me about all of this – besides the question of when did 3 minutes become a long time? -- is that measuring time is a human-made construct. The Earth has been orbiting the sun 4 + billion years. For the majority of that “time”, humanity hasn’t been around to clock Earth’s passage around the sun. Using a human-oriented time analogy, if the life-span so far of the earth were compressed into 24 human hours, we would show up on the planet in the last 4 seconds before midnight. We’ve been here way less than that magic 1 minute. Bottom line, the Earth has been doing just fine orbiting the Sun without the use of our clocks – either digital, analog, sundial, or hour glass.
TIME IS POWER
So why do we measure time? Power. Once the agricultural revolution took hold and human cultures shifted from hunting and gathering to planting and harvesting, it became increasingly important to understand the rhythms of the Earth’s voyage around the sun. Measuring time helps answer the question: When is the best time to plant your crop in order to yield a good harvest? Is it when the time of sunlight is equal to the time of darkness? Or is it when the time of sunlight is almost double the time of darkness? How many full moons will appear and disappear before the cold and darkness changes to light and warmth?
Whoever masters the optimum planting time, masters feeding their tribe. Whichever tribe is better fed, is the tribe which controls the most resources. Whichever tribe controls the most resources is the one with the most power.
TIME IS ARBITRARY
The idea of using a calendar is human-created and society-centric. The Mayans calculate time according to the cycles of the moon and their new year occurs in the month called July in Western civilization. We get our idea of a seven day week from the Babylonians, who connected the sequence of sunrise and sunset to their major seven gods who were connected to seven heavenly bodies. In the Hindu calendar, the day starts with the sunrise. According to the Jewish religion and the ancient Druids, the day started at sunset. It wasn’t until 1532, when Copernicus released his work on heliocentrism, that the idea of the Earth orbiting the Sun rather than the other way around became a mainstream thought. The calendars became more sophisticated. In 1751, an effort to match up the two major calendars being used in Western Civilization, England declared that year to be only 282 days long, running from March 25th to December 31st. The year 1752 started on January 1st instead of the previous New Year’s Day of March 25th. To complete the process, another adjustment had to be made later in 1752. The month of September was shortened by eleven days. The people of England went to bed on Wednesday September 2nd and woke up on Thursday September 14th.
TIME IS NOT CONSTANT
As we increase our ability to measure time down to the millisecond by the use of Cesium atoms, we’ve realized our planet doesn’t stick to the same 24 hour clock like we assumed. Our planet is a vibrant, ever changing entity. The Earth can gain and lose time – albeit only microseconds – whenever there is a major earthquake. Between the Indonesia mega-thrust earthquake in 2004, the Chilean earthquake of 2010, and the Japanese earthquake of 2011, the earth has lost 6 micro-seconds from its day. Clocking that 1 minute video isn’t quite as accurate as we think.
TIME IS SUBJECTIVE
Time slows when you are doing something which interests you. Time is short when you are late for a meeting. Time is crucial when the game clock says 5 seconds and your team is behind one basket. It’s all about perception.
This blog isn’t a judgment of how we live our lives in the 21st century. I’m simply noticing that our relationship to time changes, well, over time. How Copernicus related to time in the 1500s, or how we related to it before the advent of the atomic clock, no longer serves us. With the recent advances in quantum physics, I expect our relationship to time will evolve even more in the next 20 years.
The take- away from all of this is that most important thing is to be in the moment. Our awareness of the moment is the only thing we can control. In that one moment, we build the rest of our lives.
So, the next time you worry that you are out of time or that you don’t have enough time, relax. Be in the moment. We made all the rest up anyway.
