Time

Einstein said time was relative. It depends on your perspective. It also depends on what you are doing. If you are doing something like the basic step in Wii, which is just stepping on and off the balance board for a half hour, a half hour can take a long time to pass. If, however, you are watching a very funny sit-com or something, the half hour can fly by at the speed of light. Perspective plays a very large role in time. I doubt that’s what Einstein had in mind, but it does explain the paradox of how years can pass so quickly while the days crawl. It has nothing to do with light and everything to do with our perceptions. That’s because we are the only animals with a concept of time.

Most animals have no concept of time. They know when to hunt or gather their food and they know when to sleep. They also know when to mate, but that is the extent of their need for time. Even then, it isn’t time that tells them that, it is the clues in the environment. If they are nocturnal, the sun going down signals that it is time for them to become active. It is time for them to sleep when the sun begins to rise. They don’t really need time.

Only humans have raised spending time to such a frenzied activity. Most animals spend their time waiting in ambush, grazing, mating or sleeping. Not humans, we have created ways to spend time that have nothing to do with survival. Any sport, no, any of our so-called leisure activities have little to do with survival, with the exception of our rather complicated mating rituals. When we are not doing those, we are sleeping, eating or working for a living. That last is the most complicated way that we spend our time. It’s also the closest we come to spending time on our own survival, again with the exception of our mating rituals.

Time is a problem for many people. Some feel they have too much time on their hands, others that they don’t have enough time to do what they need to do. Time is artificial. We took the basic clues in nature and divided it up into sections. We called it time and then our troubles with it began. That’s when we found that we had either too much time and developed boredom or too little time and developed ulcers. We have lost the ability to go with the flow.

We are far too conscious of time and that leads us to wishing for the weekend. We wish our lives away, wishing for the weekend. We see the weeks as too long and the weekends too short. We look for ways to lengthen the weekend, but we abhor retirement. We work a paycheck and wish for payday, again, wishing our lives to pass more quickly.

When we are busy, we see time pass quickly, when we are bored, it goes slowly. That’s how we get so messed up in time. We have to let time go. We have re-learn how to move slowly. We have become obsessed with speed. The faster things go, the more we like it. That’s another reason we have ulcers. We need to learn how to relax. We need to learn how to ignore this monster we have created and call time.

About pebblepup

I am not one who is comfortable talking about myself but here goes. I enjoy writing, family history, and reading. I decided to do this blog because I wanted to try something new. I decided to make it a weekly blog because I wasn't sure that I could keep up with a daily one, and monthly seemed like I was writing a magazine. I think I did ok with my choices. You'll notice that there are not a lot of graphics on my site. That's because there are graphics plastered everywhere on the Internet and those sites sometimes take forever to load. This blog is a place where you can kick back, relax and be ready to be amused. At least I hope I willbamuse you. This blog is on a variety of subjects from my ficitional cat agency, the FFL, which is monthly, to instructional blogs to editorials, which are my opinions only. I admit that I don't know everything and could be wrong -- I frequently am. Now, stop reading about me and read what I have to say!