why time isn’t what you think it is

time. what is time? google regards time as “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole”. but is time really so metric as we think? can it be summed up and contained by arbitrary measurements? i don’t think so.

in today’s society we regard present as the now, past as what has been, and future as what is yet to come. but hear me out- this sounds crazy- time is not real. or at least, not in the sense that we consider it to be currently. light travels at an impossibly fast speed of 299 792 458 m / s. it takes 1.3 seconds for light to travel from the moon to the human eye, and almost no time at all for light to travel from that cup of coffee your holding to you. however, it does still take time. a miniscule, vanishingly small fraction of time; but time, nonetheless. everything we see we are seeing a tiny fraction late. that dusty hairbrush on your windowsill- you’re seeing it how it was a teeny fraction of a second ago! the chair your sitting on- not how it is right now, but how it was just then. the neighbour from across the street you’re chatting to- you’re chatting to their face of the past, and hearing what they said in it too! because, by this (slightly pointless but, nevertheless, very interesting) logic, nothing is truly now. what you see around you are mere reflections of the past- even if that past is very recent. the only thing we can truly rely on to exist in the present is ourselves, and even that becomes complicated.

when you’re talking to someone… are you talking to them now or are you talking to them in their past? most people would say now, but i consider myself to be a bit of an alternative thinker (i.e- a weirdo), so i’d say the past. after all, what you are seeing and hearing isn’t happening in their now- its happening in their past, which is your now. their past is your present. your past is their present. your presents cannot coexist.

so why, you may ask, can we still have conversations and interact if our individual experiences with time are incompatible? the answer is simple. the amount of time it takes for light to reflect from their face to your eye is so, so minute; it hardly registers. also, your past is their present too! your past coexists with their present whilst your present simultaneously coexists with their past. sound crazy? yep! you may also be wondering- or perhaps not, but for the sake of this article let’s say you are- whether or not this even matters. i could go onto a whole other philosophical (and borderline delusional) conversation about what it means to matter, but i’ll save that for another day and keep it simple(ish) for now.

the truth is: time, as both a concept and an arbitrary measurement, is ever evolving. only recently, scientists were debating whether or not to knock a second off a year because the earth is spinning so quickly. (i’d vote against, i’m already way behind on deadlines!) time is not just how we perceive it to be. i don’t believe time is something that can be measured in seconds. i believe it is something fluid, incomprehensible, and uncontrollable. and honestly- somewhat unreal.

time is not what you think it is.