Little drops of water, little grains of sand
Make the mighty ocean and the peaceful land.
Thus the little minutes humble though they be
Make a mighty ocean of eternity.
Why do we consider twenty-four hours to be a day when a day is actually the period of time between dawn and dusk? Why do we have seven days in a week instead of eight? What’s the reason for time? Does time exist without the existence of a human being, who interprets what time is - with his human consciousness? Simply put, does time exist without someone reading the clock?
I have always been curious to find out some basic answer to a very simple question: what is time? I have read several theories on time but time cannot be understood generally with theories alone. Many philosophers have defined time. Newton has defined time as a dimension in which events occur in sequence, one after another. Einstein has proved that time is relative. Similarly, Kant and Leibniz have defined time as neither an event nor a thing whereas they claimed it can never be measured for just because we have a calendar or a clock doesn’t mean that we have more or less time.
The cycle of human life revolves around the sun. As sun rises and sets every day, every individual with some exceptions wakes up and goes to bed. It is apparent that we live in time-space. Every instant of our time is like a flowing river. The moments that we share with friends, loved ones and family, once gone, cannot come back. These moments are then stored in the form of images in our brain. These images float around like the pendulum every now and then.
For example, I have realized that my childhood days cannot come back again. Now they are stored in my memory in the form of images. Time waits for no one and it surely will make us old men. My granny when she was sixty years old told me it was just like yesterday that she was a girl. Occasionally, I bump into my old friends and classmates. Seeing them I could feel like what my granny said.
In life men are controlled by time. They are always fighting against it. One must learn to make use of time to its maximum. A man may waste ten years and the next ten years may go down to the drain. Have you ever thought of how many years left you have? Time is precious so one must control it well. Use it for working out things that may benefit mankind in the end. Use it in the right way and you will gain too. Appreciate your love ones and don't take them for granted. Remember with every sunrise and sunset, a day is gone behind you. Even if one cries for it, it will not return. Men may be of high intelligence yet no one can rewind the clock to suit them. Estimate the time that you have and contribute every minute if you can. Fulfill the purpose of life so that it will not be a loss and an illusion of the past.
Tick, tock, tick, tock. Most of the time we can never seem to get enough of it. Sometimes it flies, sometimes it crawls. To realize the value of a year, ask a student who received a failing grade. To comprehend the value of a month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby. To appreciate the value of a week, ask the person in need of a new heart. To know the value of an hour, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet. To fathom the value of a minute, ask a person who missed the train. To actualize the value of a second, ask the person who just avoided being hit by the train. To measure the value of a millisecond, ask the person who won a gold medal in the Olympics.
Before making any further statement on time, one needs to understand what time is. Time allows people to perceive motion. Furthermore, people perceive it differently. It is extremely important to understand that the concept of time is not easy to explain and not easy to comprehend even among each other. And every culture has its own time-concept. Our country is not an exception. We can be as pragmatic as Americans. That is schedules are rather important for us. But at the same time we are like South Asians and sometimes we waste our time talking to people eager to find out unnecessary information. Some people are quite punctual and schedule their time rather thoroughly. But some of them tend to slacken and instead of suiting to time they relax as if there were years and years to come.
From time to time we face the problem of a wrong handling of time. Many individuals cannot plan, that is why they are always late making the surrounding people cool their heels. An old friend of mine once told me she had been invited to a wedding by her relatives. She was as always punctual and came in time – at five o’clock. She waited for half an hour but no one came. An hour passed and the guests began to arrive. She asked the reason of it – and was astonished. The wedding should have begun at six o’clock. The young couple on purpose appointed the ceremony an hour earlier because their relatives and friends often used to keep the newlyweds waiting.
I wouldn’t say that our local time system is somewhat different from that in other countries. In my opinion it depends on the way one is brought up, that is on the family background. For instance, as a kid I got to school by bus. It took me about twenty minutes. And I was never late for classes. Some of my classmates however lived nearby but they were not that punctual.
The reason was I had been taught to appreciate my time and time of others. I learned to feel it and plan it properly.
In my quest for the basic understanding of time, I have come to the conclusion that time is neither everything nor anything. Time might be totality of events as Newton has said at one point and relatively in motion as Einstein has said at other point.
After meticulous reflections I have also understood that to feel that you have not wasted your life you need to go and see the world. That will widen and enlarge your heart and mind. Only then can you feel extensiveness in this narrow living space of the society. There’s no going back. We must live in the present and we should invest time carefully as to receive the most we can in health, happiness, love and success. The clock is running, so make the most of today. As an old saying goes: today is a gift, that’s why they call it the present.
