I was talking to my son a while back who was full of questions about everything, and this is paraphrased from what I said to him...
Time is not real, so to a small boy or girl it is a hard concept to understand. Although time is not real there are machines that measure it, and sometimes you can hear them ticking. These time machines are everywhere and many people even wear them on the ends of their arms and look at them to find out what time it is.
How to tell the time is one of the things you are taught when you’re young and yet time is always now, that’s the real time, but this isn’t taught in schools, in fact the real time of now is taught right out of you in favour of machine time.
When you know machine time you can divide up your spirit into the hours and minutes of conformity to fit in to the system that runs on machine time and life is measured in productivity, and time was invented to better manage that.
Away from the clocks time is subjective and so a half an hour is usually not too long unless you are waiting for something, but later on can be a long time and maybe never comes, while soon can be stretched into sometime in the future, so if you have to do something now then, in a while is far too long.
It is said that the thief of time is unfocused attention where time is wasted not fulfilling your purpose; but everyone needs down-time away from the machines that tick it all away and perhaps real time is no time or non-time where the moment is always now as when we were children and asked: “how big is a while?” To which the reply would be: “A while is as big as you can make it or as small as you can forget it.”
Some people do throw away their time pieces hoping to get back to the timeless, and some do succeed, but once you’ve known time it’s not so easy to get out of; you’re in time and of time and live your life by it.
When you’re out of time is it still predictable? Not so far as you can count it.
Are there circumstances that make it go faster or slower?
Image by Barbara A Lane from Pixabay
Einstein’s theory of relativity says that time changes with the observer relative to where they are in the universe.
Is time fundamental or emergent has been asked by many with no clear answer emerging.
Time can be measured but only as a concept: what has gone can only be quantified and what is to come can only be theorised which leaves only the now that is not in time.
What is time?
Time is a system of measurement.
Is time real?
If we don’t know if time is real or not then perhaps we’ve not evolved enough yet and so must live in time until we know better that time is simply what we get when we’re in time and when we’re out of it then there is no more time.
How long is a while?
It’s as big as nothing and as long as you can make it.
Who invented nothing daddy?
Nobody.
Why?
So nowhere would have friends to play with.
Where is nowhere?
Nowhere is somewhere else.
Can I go play there?
Sure you can, come back in a while…
Image by RENE RAUSCHENBERGER from Pixabay
A SHORT WHILE
How much life do we have?
We have enough for a short while.
Can it be stretched?
Only as far as it lasts.
If I run faster do I go further?
We go only as far as we do and then no more.
If I’ve made a short while go a long way is it still a short while?
No matter how long a while it is, it is always a short while in the infinite.
How long is infinite?
A long while.
What’s a while?
A while is the size of your waiting between now and then and time is most often used for telling the moments apart and that is why we have clocks to tell us how long a while is.
Image from Pixabay