Time is not a simple thing that we take it to be, it is pregnant with meaning and mystery. Mankind perishes speedily by thinking of time as real.
What, then is time? There are three presents: the present of things past in memory, the present of things present in sight, and the present of things future in expectation.
For TS Eliot, in Four Quartets, “Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future/ And time future contained in time past/ If all time is eternally present/ All time is unredeemable.”
Everything that has ever happened in the past, or will happen in the future, is technically happening simultaneously in the Now.
Although there is no consensus on the definition of time, there is no disagreement about its measurement. “My time and your time are different depending on how fast we are moving from each other.” The faster we move, the greater the magnitude of the time dilation we experience.
Music and Other Poems, “Time is too slow for those who wait,/ Too swift for those who fear,/ Too long for those who grieve,/ Too short for those who rejoice,/ But for those who love, time is eternity.”
Throughout history, mankind has tried to measure time with various methods. At first, it was the seasons, hot or cold, later the year was divided into months, weeks, and days. Sumerians invented the system of Time by dividing hours into 60 minutes and days into 24 hours. Babylonians divided the year into 12 equal parts and the day into 24 hours according to the solar calendar. According to the ancient Egyptian priests, time was the disappearance of energy; in other words, the transformation process of energy that symbolised the eternal creator.
Time is an intangible element of our daily life, though describing its fundamental nature is much harder. “Time goes, you say? Ah! No, time stays, we go.”
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