Dear Heavenly Friend,

            I just finished reading the book The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom. It’s a sad tale about death and love, but most of all it’s about time. There was a recent Slate article, four pages long about how we have only ever gotten busier even though we make technologies that should be giving us more free time and how the world is filled with innumerable sources of stress, but most of all it’s about time.

            Time is an interesting subject for me. I like time. I have two beliefs in regards to time: if something is important enough you will make time; and, that you will always have enough time. It is a comfort knowing that if I stop to appreciate a flower that hangs over a wall and into the space above a sidewalk that I frequent that the time I spend to look at it and pull it down close to me so that I can smell shows that that single flower is both important to me and that I have ample time to do such an impulsive act.

            In reality, both beliefs are just illusions that I have made to make myself feel good. While the first statement is true enough, it is not 100% true. There are somethings that are undoubtedly important that fall by the wayside. I cannot be in two places at once. In such situations I usually default to the person whom I promised first, it’s the fairest way to deal with an unfair world.

            The second isn’t even close to being true. Or at the very least there is no way to know if it is true. I’m not really sure why I would enough time? Am I supposed to be doing something with my life? I definitely refuse to acknowledge that people have a purpose. And if there is nothing that I must or should do, then time is pointless.

            So what exactly is time and why does it matter? I prefer to think of it as part of the coordinates for locations, the infamous space-time if you will. If I were to meet someone somewhere I need a time and a place delineated by at least two coordinates, more often three: “I’ll meet you in conference room at 1pm., it’s up two floors—to the right as you leave the stairs at the end of the hallway.”  Four dimensions are covered in that single sentence.

            But what if I say something is to take two hours, surely time as duration is important? It’s really actually not though. If something is important enough, it doesn’t matter where you, you’ll change your priorities, in which case duration doesn’t matter.  Likewise, you’ll continue to pursue something until something else entices you to change priorities, namely food and/or exhaustion. In that case the duration is caused by your physical needs not time.

            Humans have a need to measure things and then of course to measure themselves against those things. I am no exception. I remember back in high school equating time into miles. If something was a minute, it’ld be changed to a quarter mile. If something were five minutes, it was a mile. If something was thirty minutes, it would be a little more than four miles. I was literally racing time and for nothing more than the simple fact that I could.

            I like time. I think it’s interesting. But I don’t think time really matters. I think we’ld be better off without it.

            Love,

                        Bill