Time to Time

A vague question, created to evoke a multitude of answers.

Perhaps this prompt has been primed to drop now as U.S. Daylight Savings Time comes to an end.

I recall grousing about DST in an early post here.

A month before his own death, Einstein wrote: “the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion,”

His theory of special relativity upended Newton’s model that time was a constant, ticking at the same speed, for everyone, everywhere.

Einstein posited that in a four dimensional continuum time does not “flow” as we perceive that it does. Events in spacetime are static, with past, present, and future existing at the same time. We just have difficulty seeing it that way.

We rise from slumber to watch the sun rise and move across the sky to sunset. We perceive that the sun is moving across the sky. In truth, the sun is not moving at all- we, on the Earth are rotating around it instead.

Maybe, in your time travel automobile, you look out the window. The signpost for events in your life are standing still, but traveling through spacetime, you imagine those events are moving, and quicker than you’d like. You speedily approach each one, then watch them exit in the rear view mirror.

Wishing for more time is sort of useless. Perhaps wishing for a slower passage of it might be more appropriate, or maybe we should relax and enjoying the trip?