Year

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. ...

                                                                  -------- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Days Gone By: Physics Offers Explanation To Why Time Flies As We Get Older"

"Now, a fascinating new study is offering up a more scientific explanation: as we age, the speed in which our brains obtain and process images gradually slows, resulting in this temporal discrepancy in memories.

Simply put, this slowing of the brain’s imaging speed causes perception of time to speed up."

Another way of saying it is that it only seems that way and in reality time is not going any faster or slower. It could also be that it is just how we remember it as a child because there was so much ahead to look forward to then, while today's older folks dread that "time is running out". Fast forward to three decades from today and these young ones who feel time is going too slowly will have aged by then and they too will be ruminating no differently from what the older folks do today.

One can be obsessed with time, another maybe nonchalant, some may even claim to be simply agnostic about the whole idea of time or getting old.  Perhaps the latter does actually make sense and that it must be the proper way. We've heard of the expression, "marching to a different drummer".  Well, maybe it is true some folks simply look at or sense time as "running on a different cadence" from the rest of us.

And there lies the enigma of time.  This takes us to this often cited statement alluded to Albert Einstein - no specific evidence he actually said it - when he tried to explain his theory of relativity when he said (purportedly),  “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”

One thing we know for sure that is supported by history is that the measurement of time, as in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years were all made up by us. It is not based on some universal timing mechanism that regulates everything according to an unbreakable set of rules.  

Merely from our point of view, the shorter units of "time" were from arbitrarily subdividing into smaller units of intervals that which are contained within what it takes for the globe to circle the sun.  The number of days in it was an approximation based on the number of degrees in a circle (exactly 360).  The 365 was an approximation that needs to be corrected with one leap year every four years.  

365-1/4 days a year, effectively as the average length of a year. 12 months divide a year, each month, alternating between 30 and 31 days except in February that has only 28 days except on a leap year when it gets 29 days and then we have two consecutive months of 31 days each: July and August. A month is approximately how long it takes for the moon to make one complete orbit* around the earth.  (*The phase of the moon is nothing more than its location to the earth relative to the sun. For example, a full moon means that it is directly opposite relative to where the sun is, thus it gets the maximum sunlight reflecting back to us, which we perceive as the full moon. That moonlight diminishes to almost nothing by the time it is about in between the earth and the sun. A perfect alignment is what we call an eclipse. Actually, its orbit is not a perfect circle so it takes on average 29-1/2 days to make one full circle).

24 hours is merely subdividing the time it takes for earth to make one complete rotation on its axis.   Minutes and seconds are just as arbitrary as well.  So, time or the concept of time is a human invention.  Really?  Really.

In some far away solar system from some far away constellation of stars,  even from galaxies far, far away, surmised inhabitants in one of the planets there, if they have advanced their civilization to some level similar to ours if not more so, they could conceivably have stumbled into a different idea of time - different from ours entirely.  However, there is no telling how it would be like.  How would they have divided the units of time.  The length of their days, between daylight and nightfall, will depend on their planet's size and its speed rotation around its access.

So, we've established our concept of time is local. And time, therefore, is really just an arbitrary concept, an illusion. I repeat, it is an illusion.  The reader, if this gets too much or rendered to involuntary rolling of the eyes, may stop here and go on about your day, unless you are curious to find out why time is just an illusion.  Understanding it or finding out, I'm afraid, will not make your day any longer or shorter, nor improve your allocation of time.   Now, you can walk away if you want or take an aspirin if the headache is unbearable and read on.

Here it comes.  Let's do a thought experiment.  We do not need a laboratory.  All that is required is an open mind and some imagination.  Imagine two huge wheels with 365 teeth (gear teeth) each positioned horizontally next to each other on a flat surface.  Imagine two people.  One sits at a location facing and nearly touching a section of the rim of the one wheel that is rotating on its axis. We call him the Sitter (S).  Imagine another person who walks along the rim of the other huge but stationary wheel nearby.  We call him the Walker (W).  The sitter observes the wheel turning and he can clearly see it moving one gear tooth at a time at a fix interval passing in front of him. He merely observes the teeth moving along but he does not have a watch or timer; in fact, he does not even have a concept of time, except he knows the gear to have 365 teeth.  Now, at the beginning of his observation, thinking about all the teeth that have yet to come along his view, he is prepared for a long haul of observation. The sitter (S) makes note of the intervals.

The walker (W) observes each tooth by walking along the rim of the stationary wheel and sees each tooth at regular interval according to his pace.  In the beginning of his walk, knowing how many teeth to go, he makes note of his pace.

At the start, (S) must perceive a slower interval between each tooth as he knows there are plenty more to come along his observation seat.  The same way with (W) who at the beginning of his walk he must perceive his pace as slow as well because of all the teeth ahead that he must cover.

Now, by the 350th, or 360th tooth, either one of them must sense the intervals to be a bit faster than what it used to be at the beginning.  The perception is exacerbated by the fact that each of them was told that at the end, by the 365th tooth, their fate is unknown.  The end is sealed with uncertainty and oblivion.  Their sense of each interval, whether as (S) or (W) is influenced by the anticipation of the end closing in.  The intervals seem to go much more quickly, made worse by their eagerness for more teeth to observe because otherwise, the uncertain end will come.  It would have felt as if the teeth were coming along much too fast.

Now, assume one gear tooth as one event.  If they were to define the intervals between the series of events then one must define the gaps in between each occurrence.  That definition is something they will sense as time. (S) or (W) are different observers but they are likely to define the gaps the same way and make sense of it in a similar manner. Not necessarily, even if the gear tooth passes (S) at the same pace as (W) is walking. They just defined the concept of time as something that merely separated the teeth from each other. More importantly, and this is crucial, the gaps made sure the teeth did not all come at the same instance.  Except that one observes each event by watching each tooth come along as (S), or observes each tooth as they walk along the rim, with (W) going from each event to the next.  Nevertheless, each gap made sure all the teeth - all the events, or every happening - do not come all at once.  Time as defined by them made sure that not everything is observed all at once.  Time therefore is nature's way of making sure not everything happens all at once and insuring it is all in sequence. A broken egg is observed as first being a whole egg and then its shells breaking and its contents all spreading out on a hot skillet.  It is never observed to reform from the skillet back to being a whole egg.

One more thing.  Someone driving along the countryside will have perceived time a lot more differently from someone waiting at home anxiously awaiting for his arrival.

Now, you know why time then becomes subjectively an illusion. If you've come this far then it wasn't so bad, was it?  I made that little thought experiment up but you will have to agree that we as individuals will observe the flow of time differently.  Now, you may argue that the clock is the ultimate arbiter and therefore it makes time absolute.  You will cite that Michael Phelps won his event by touching the pool's end ahead of everyone else, or that within the seconds left in the game the basketball made it through the hoop in time or not.  There is no argument there.  But here is where it gets weird.  Even weirder.

E.T. observing the race or the basketball game through a powerful telescope from their planet around their star XG-2 from a constellation far, far away, will have a different sense of how fast Michael Phelps was or that his time to finish was either longer or shorter relative to how the local earthling saw the race.  E.T. will also observe that the time it took for the basketful from the shooter's hand to get to the hoop is at a different rate from how it was observed here on earth. There will be no dispute as to who won or whether the basketball made it in time or not.

Let's go back to the earlier quote:

"...the speed in which our brains obtain and process images gradually slows, resulting in this temporal discrepancy in memories".

Is it that or because as we get older we have so much more information in our head that we can actually process what we observe more quickly.  Early in my woodworking experience, projects seemed to get forever to finish, obviously took longer to complete as my skills were limited.  Clearly so were my access to better tools and more efficient techniques.  Today, not only do I finish projects much more quickly, the quality is not only more refined, it is a lot more sophisticated.  That is my opinion.

The larger question is this.  As we go through life, specially as we get older, do we become the sitter (S) or should we continue to be the walker (W)? We can just sit and let things go by us or should we rather be walking and exploring to get to them.  Even if we are physically slowed down, or even deprived of our mobility, we can still walk with our minds. Let us not be sitters.  We may not do it as briskly, physically or mentally, but we ought to be walkers.  We ought not to let the world pass before our eyes, let us get to the world - physically or with our mind's eye - by walking through it.