Time

Time is an extraordinarily subjective concept, despite the fact that scientists formulated its definition long ago, the units of measurement, and the moments lived by humanity are counted by the world's most precise atomic clock (which loses no more than 1 second in a million years). Time is considered the fourth dimension (alongside the three dimensions of space), and is usually divided into past, present, and future. It seems as though humans invented time in order to be able to control others and themselves, to condemn and reproach others and themselves for something not having happened at quite the right time - for not having submitted a report on time, not having arrived for a meeting punctually, not having said the right words at the right moment.

 

Salvador Dalí "Exploding Clock" & hourglass

The world is full of teachings - both religious and philosophical - claiming that everything happens at the time appointed for it, that nothing can be hastened, delayed, or missed. But the modern person is always in a rush, rushing to accomplish everything, and the more they accomplish, the more they understand how much remains undone. What is the measure of time spent, completed, waited out, or hastened? Do you experience time the same way I do? I waited an eternity for you, but you disregarded my time and arrived only now. I was only 10 minutes late, but you have already forgotten that you promised to be patient and not be angry when I was late last time.

When encountering the beautiful, the noble, the bright - one might even say the "divine" - a person wishes to stop time, not understanding that time is movement and by stopping it, everything admired is destroyed. Moreover, suffering, pain, and the anticipation of relief stretch time to dimensions barely comprehensible to the human mind. How every thousandth of a second of pain or humiliation drags! Subjectively, confirmed by psychological research, but human nature refuses to accept it. Every scar needs time to heal - the only medicine that heals both physical and psychological wounds. There is no better one, but hordes of researchers search, try to invent, and partially find remedies for rapid wound healing.

How productively have you spent, lived through the time allotted to you? Who will be the assessor, the measure - yourself, your fellow person, the assumptions prevailing in society, dogmas? Let us imagine such a scene: one person arrives dragging along some ten thick binders full of good or less good deeds accomplished for the benefit of science, culture, education, religion, charity and goodness knows what else. Exhausted and happy. The other arrives empty-handed - your assessment is indifferent to me, I am self-sufficient, I have spent all this time living for someone on the other side, I have always been treated like a raw egg, I have never given anyone gifts, but this does not trouble me, I am in harmony, I own nothing, but lack nothing either. Liberated and happy. Different addends, the same result.

A certain bewilderment can set in when there has always been a shortage of time (the most popular excuse for not doing what is difficult) and now there is plenty of time. What to do with all this time? Unfortunately the majority choose to enter another world - the world lived by characters in books or films, the world of internet site and blog writers, the world of their children or parents, and the like. Rarely does anyone go for a walk by the sea or along their town's familiar yet surprisingly strange streets; cook a meal with love over a live flame, using no pre-prepared products but peeling, cutting, and grating everything themselves, and eat it themselves, savour it leaning back comfortably in an armchair; repot plants, not in order to show off to a neighbour, relative, or housemate, but simply because the plants are not in the right place or soil, and so on. When you think about it, how far we are from the primordial reality and time determined by the natural rhythm, not by clocks.

One should wake when the sun has risen and when one is rested; go somewhere in order to arrive, not to be on time; welcome guests or wait for a husband to come home, not simply wait; run in order to feel strength and vigour in one's legs, not to be first or to reach the finish at all, and so on. Is this even possible?

A remarkable invention is the hourglass. I have at least two on my shelf. You can gaze and gaze without taking your eyes off it, watching how time flows. My time, your time, our time, subjective time.