Time

 So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

-Pink Floyd, Time. The Dark Side of the Moon

That’s one way to look at it, and it’s true in a short-term materialistic human sense, and since you are most likely human, it may resonate. We all know we can’t fight time.

What if I told you time doesn’t exist? Well, you’d probably say it sure seems to. And in a uniquely human perceptual way, it does. But on a larger (or is it smaller?) cosmic/quantum scale, it doesn’t. We’ll get to that soon.

So, what is time? Physicist John Wheeler said it about as concisely as one can- 

Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.  

Sometimes the simplest things are the most profound.

Measuring time is a useful tool; it keeps our lives organized, coordinated, and orchestrated. It comes in handy in making sure that when we meet a friend for coffee, we won’t be sitting there by ourselves. It seems real because we are innately aware of the fact we are born at one point on the continuum we call time, knowing all along there is another point on that continuum where we’ll end. The space between the two points is what we call our lives.

We measure time rhythmically, of course. A clock ticks, counting seconds, our heart beats, we breathe, and the days pass like wandering dreams, our circadian rhythms delicately synchronized to the rhythms of nature, perfectly tuned in. The seasons pass as the earth circles the sun at around 67,000 mph, marking a year, while our solar system moves through the Milky Way at over 500,000 miles per hour. Even at this speed, the solar system will take 230 million years to make one trip around the Milky Way. Nature is nothing if not patient. Galactic time scales boggle the mind.

We spend time, kill time, make time, waste time, and never seem to have enough time. Does anybody know what time it is? Our lives are centered around a sense of time, and so are our bodies.

Time is said to be our most precious thing; you can always make more money, but you can’t make more time. People who are terminally ill often reflect upon this as they face the awareness the curtain is about to fall on the final act of their lives. It is all perception, though, as our human experience is finite from the beginning; we don’t appreciate how finite until we are threatened with its loss.

As we get older, we realize we have less time to go before the end of our journey, so we begin to value our time more. Strangely, we also start to feel like the years are getting shorter. Christmas and birthdays seem to come around faster and faster. There is a theory as to why this is so- when we are 80 years old, one year is 1/80th of our life experience; when we are one year old, one year is 100% of our life experience--it kind of makes sense, sort of.

We all know time is malleable, or at least our perception of it is. Time spent in a dentist’s chair or the middle seat takes a lot longer to pass than time spent virtually anywhere else. Time flies, as they say, but sometimes it just seems to dig in its heels.

I have caught glimpses of the illusory nature of time. When one is lucky enough to touch infinity, if even for a moment, it is life-changing. The immense feeling of peace that permeates one’s heart when in that state is indescribable. I wrote of this in A Gentler Path.

…a peaceful timelessness permeated everything. With the illusion of time removed from my perception, the pressure from always trying to get things done (and never being able to) was gone. All the deadlines, including the one I had erroneously placed at the end of my life, were now seen as sheer folly. I knew I went on forever, and from this knowing came profound peace.

The sense of life slowing described below was so beautiful I’m brought to tears when remembering it—pure bliss.

Whether I was walking in the woods or taking part in life’s more mundane chores like grocery shopping, all experience now floated within a brilliant and effervescent pool of warmth and peace. At the supermarket, I would watch everyone moving about in slow motion, walking up and down the aisles, making their choices, and filling their carts. I sensed their spirits; I glimpsed their souls. I watched as everyone, cloaked in their uniquely beautiful manifestations of flesh, went about the business of living. Each was expressing life in their way, each displaying varying degrees of awareness and presence, and each expressing varying degrees of Love and pain. I watched and realized we are all dancing to a divine symphony—unheard but deeply felt.  

Is our awareness of time a blessing or a curse? I will leave that up to you.  

I believe we are given the gift of being able to perceive time (whether it is real or not) so that our lives have meaning. If we weren’t aware of the finite nature of this life, why would we get out of bed in the morning? If you had forever to get something done, when would you do it? Time gives context. It is the borders within which we paint the masterpiece that is our lives. Without the frame, the painting would have no definition, no meaning.

Life is a process, not a “thing.” Forever moving and defined by change, it could be said time is simply a measure of that change. Nothing is static, from the sub-atomic realm to the motion of galaxies. Life is an eternal dynamic process that interacts with itself. We are but a witness.

So, does time exist? Let’s start philosophically. Aristotle said- 

Time consists of the past, present, and future. But the past has been and is no longer, while the future is about to be and is not yet. And the now (that is, the present) is evidently not a part of time. Since no parts of time exist, how can time itself exist?

So, the only place we live, the present, is more of a boundary between two aspects of time that don’t exist. But the present moment is not measurable in any mathematical way. The present moment is eternal and forever moving through conscious experience.

Quantum physics is bearing this out. We can easily go down a rabbit hole here, but we will try to keep it as simple as possible.

Experiments have shown that in the quantum world (which is our world), time does not exist. Through what is known as quantum entanglement, something Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” modern physics has proven that an action on a sub-atomic particle in one place can have an instantaneous effect on another particle (with which it was previously energetically paired or entangled) anywhere in the universe as if there was no distance or space between them. This means this action is happening beyond the speed of light, disproving the theory of special relativity, hence the moniker Einstein gave it. He did not want to believe it, even though he was aware of the possibility it existed. (Einstein reportedly said that time is a “stubbornly persistent illusion”).

What does this have to do with time? Well, if distance is arbitrary in the subatomic realm, the basis of all the stuff from which we are made, doesn’t that make time arbitrary as well? In the quantum world, there is no past or future; only the eternal now exists. We exist in a connected, quantum, and hence timeless universe.  

Now the research is beginning to show that quantum entanglement holds our DNA together, and it may be involved in genetic mutations, evolution, and even the origins of life. It makes perfect intuitive sense to me. It is hard not to chuckle sometimes when science “proves” what is common sense and obvious to many of us. Energy is everything, and everything is connected energetically. Duh.

The fact is, we are all “entangled” in the larger sense because everything we are and everything we can be arises from the same source. This is the meaning of Oneness. There is no and can be no separation between us. In our three-dimensional material world, physical separation, i.e., I am me, and you are you, I am this, and you are that, seems so real, as real as the passing of time does, but we can see now that both are part of the same grand illusion.  

I believe this illusion exists for a reason; how could it not? This material world, with all that is in it, all of nature, the planet, and our bodies, are just props, a stage, or a playground if you will. It is a place to interact, play, and experiment to learn about the fundamental nature of all that is- Love.

Someone once said that life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. You are never going to get everything done just by the fact that if you did, you would only find other stuff to do. I say, be aware of time and use it constructively to shape your experience efficiently, but don’t be ruled by it. Relax into the present moment and breathe. Enjoy yourself, and let nature be your guide.

And then remember these words-

Years are nothing to me—they should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to consider them? In the world of wild nature, time is measured by seasons only—the bird does not know how old it is—the rose tree does not count its birthdays!

—Marie Corelli.