The sun is about to set. It’s 3:53 p.m.
Oh wait, never mind, it doesn’t turn dark in the early afternoon anymore. Maybe by 6 p.m these days … Is it already a week into February? Is it already the second month of 2011? Jesus, it seems like just yesterday that I was dating papers 2010, or 2004, or 1998…
Time. What a bewildering concept.
For some, time can be easily and concretely defined — the other day, my economics professor said something along the lines of “time is capital, every single minute is worth a numerical monetary value.” For others, like the ever-classic band The Smashing Pumpkins, time can be more abstract: “Time is never time at all, you can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth.”
Sometimes, time seems to be an impossible concept to put into words. While it seems most everything said, sung, written or quoted about time is true enough, no definition seems to truly encapsulate the complexity of what time means for all of us.
Who can condense the feeling of waking up and realizing that you are not in high school into literary prose? Who can pinpoint in speech the idea that in a few months it will be spring yet again, that a whole chunk of time known as winter will (thankfully) be behind us? Who can explain why people seem to be so eager for time to pass faster while also desiring it to slow down a bit?
Sorry Mr. Einstein, but “the only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once” isn’t good enough for me.
Maybe there isn’t even any reason to define time anymore. Many of us resist thinking about time — maybe because if you think too hard about it, it’s actually pretty scary. And I’m sure most of us would much rather spend every living moment busily acting, progressing and living as opposed to pausing to ponder how to measure it all.
That’s only sensible these days, when a moment’s rest can mean instantly falling behind on work, the latest technology or the daily news. Everything in the age of the Internet is all about speed — producing, working, innovating and moving faster, faster, faster.
Apart from hangover-induced late mornings, it seems college is no exception. Deadlines, meetings, events, assignments, interviews and exam dates, one after another. There’s a schedule to keep in a certain time frame, and those who can’t keep up may not get as far as those who can.
Maybe my professor was right about time, at least in this century; maybe time has been reduced to a dollar value. Otherwise, why would everyone be so eager to just churn out as much action in as little time possible without regarding what is truly lost or gained in those moments?
I know that’s what I usually do — I act, work, live and try to spend time as “productively” as possible — and damn it, it takes a deadline to make me stop and realize that hello, it’s 2011; it’s second semester; and without having realized it, I’ve been 19 years old for a week now. An age that once seemed so distant has appeared.
My dad once told me that when you’re a child, time crawls by like a turtle; when you’re a teen, hops by like a rabbit; in your 20s, gallops by like a horse; and once you hit your 40s, sprints by like a cheetah.
So I guess we’ll all be cheetahs one day — cheetahs with a few years of Binghamton University education and fancy gadgets perhaps, but cheetahs nonetheless — and nothing will make time slow down again.