It’s all just a matter of time

"Happy New Year" is the phrase I’ve seen the most on every single website I’ve visited today. I’m sure it’s what a lot of the entries on this site are about today (I hate to conform and actually write an entry about the new year as well, but hey, what else is there to write about?) That and New Year’s Resolutions, and changing, and new beginnings and everything like that. Well, I’m sick of it. I don’t mean to be bitter, but seriously, it’s just time passing. Today is different from yesterday like yesterday was different from the day before, and so on. The sun rises in the morning, and sets at night. All the while, the Earth is rotating around the Sun, changing the seasons, and the lengths of the days until eventually it gets back to where it started, and starts all over again. But it’s always the same cycle.

We, being the intelligent beings that we are, came up with a calendar to keep track of the Earth’s rotation around the Sun, breaking it into 12 relatively equal months, which are broken into days, defined by the amount of time it takes for the Earth to turn around its axis once. 24 hours. So we named it hours, and broke those down into minutes, and seconds, and milliseconds, and probably even further.

So. It’s all just time. But that brings up the question of what exactly is time? And why is it so important to us? Why, when there are so many other things to worry about, do we all seem to be the most occupied with time? I can guarantee that anyone reading this has something in their house that keeps track of time, whether it’s a clock, or a calendar, or an egg timer, or a stop watch, or maybe a sundial if you’re that old-fashioned. Everyone worries about time in some way or another. Appointment times, work schedules, school, beating the world record for the longest time holding your breath, and so many other things. Everything seems to be related to time. I suppose without it, the world be be less organized. And from my point of view, it’s already chaotic as it is.

Would the world be a better place if everyone just threw out their calendars and clocks and just stopped keeping track of time altogether? A long time ago, people got along just fine by paying attention to the position of the Sun, or the stars. Sure, there would still have to be at least some order. Without exact measurements of time we would always be late for things, be it school, work, or meeting a friend for coffee. But does time serve any other purpose than keeping the world organized? Well it keeps us from being inanimate objects I suppose. Actually if you really think about it, it keeps us from being non-existent. Even if there was only a split-second of time for us to be here, that would still be time.

So without time we wouldn’t be here. Alright. But what about our obsession with keeping track of time? It would still go on if we didn’t keep track. We waste a lot of time everyday checking the time, or the date. For what? We’re all too organized for our own good, I say. Don’t you wish we could be that obsessed with something else? Something like world peace for instance? If we spent the amount of time making sure the world was war-free and peaceful that we spend checking what time it is, I think we could accomplish a lot. But we all know that that would never happen. Ah well, in a perfect world.

And I think it’s safe to say that somebody gave me a brain that thinks entirely too much.