The Nature of Time

Well, to begin with, time, as we think about it, doesn't even really exist. We think of weeks and hours and minutes and seconds, but these are completely human inventions. Days and years can be scientifically measured, of course, but these concepts as they're familiar to us would mean nothing if we were on the surface of another planet. They're simply subjective.

Now, sure, all of these labels present a convenient way for us to function as a society, but they are really just lies we agree upon. There is no such thing as an hour. Nine o'clock in the morning does not exist. And yet, to give you an example of how powerful a hold this lie of time can have over us, more people have heart attacks at 9:00 on Monday mornings than at any other hour. Think about that. They'd rather die than go to a job they hate. How's that for processing time with an extraordinary psychology?

And examples of this abound. Traffic on the streets of our cities overflows twice a day in the hour before nine and the hour after five. Most of us eat lunch at noon and go to bed before midnight. But these are all arbitrary hours that have meaning only because we've assigned it to them. In the United States, we're used to working from nine to five, but if we all decided that we were going to take a nap in the middle of the day, that's what would become the norm. And in some areas of the world, that's exactly what happens.

Those of us who are concerned about using our time wisely -- of balancing our myriad roles effectively and getting the most success from all of them -- would do well to break out of these artificial constructs and create a personalized way of interacting with time and the things we would like to accomplish in it. That's what this artilce is about. But to do this, we first need to understand a little more about the nature of time itself and of how it progresses in the natural universe. If a week or an hour doesn't really exist, then what exactly is time? What's it made up of?

Well, as a physicist would tell you, time is the factor that distinguishes sequential events from simultaneous events. Time allows for progression, for cause and effect, but it's also the barrier that separates the present from the past and the future.

Time is not anything you can see. It's not a force that has a demonstrable effect on its own, like gravity. Gravity is actually a property of matter, but time is a property of space. We think of space as having three dimensions -- which we popularly call "length," "width," and "height" -- but it actually has at least one other dimension. The fourth dimension of space is time, which we could also call "duration." In fact, space and time are so closely linked that scientists often refer to them as parts of the same phenomenon. This is called space-time.

Now, I know this is getting to sound more like Physics 101 than a way of mastering your use of time! But believe me, it's all connected. What I want to make clear is that we're used to thinking of things as happening in space. The same amount of space could hold a house or a forest or an ocean or a landfill, just like the same amount of space could hold a BMW or a rusty old hatchback.

And I want you to start thinking of time in the same way. Space-time is nothing more than an arena for us to fill up as we choose. We can fill our own personal space-time with junk, or we can fill it with riches. The same area can bring us joy or regret, productivity or relaxation, pleasure or pain. Like so many other things, how we fill any amount of space and time comes down to simple decisions that we make every moment of our life. And that's one of the things this article is about -- how we choose to fill our time, and whether that choice is made by an extraordinary psychology or by inertia or laziness or by a thousand other impulses that rob us of our precious treasure.

But it's also about the nature of time and how time relates to nature. And especially how people experience time, because we have such a unique relationship with it. Our bodies are "designed" to last a specific amount of time. Now, every day the scientific community is learning things that help extend that functioning by just a little longer, but we'll never be able to alter the fact that there is a beginning and an end to physical. And much of the time in between is determined by natural systems for which time plays an critical role. So many of our biological functions are "timed" ... the activation of our pituitary glands that trigger puberty ... our heartbeat and respiration ... cell division and elimination ... menstruation. These are part of timed cycles, like the cycles of the tides, of the seasons, of days and nights, and of the Earth's revolution around the sun. We may or may not be aware of them, but the cycles of our biology exist in balance with these natural cycles and others.

And think about other natural cycles that move without cease around us. All living creatures are affected by cycles ... cycles like when wild animals reproduce. Think about insects like the cicada, which emerge from hibernation every seventeen years to mate. Or cycles of migration, like birds that fly south for the winter. In the wild, much of an animal's instincts are centered upon the passage of time.

But humans differ from every other life we know about because, even though we have cycles and instincts of our own, we have a conscious and active sense of passing time that goes beyond "hardwired" responses. Just the fact that we have arbitrarily determined and named intervals of time speaks much for our unique power for comprehending and harnessing it. This is really quite extraordinary, if you think about it! A cat might realize that it's hungry, but it doesn't understand why two hours must pass before its next meal. And because of this, it becomes a servant to the hunger, as it's a servant to all of its instincts.

Only we humans are different. Consider the story of a group of coal miners who were trapped underground by a cave-in. While they all survived the falling rocks, they were cut off from the surface and, even worse, from their air supply. Knowing that they only had a few hours before their air ran out, they prayed for rescue in that time, but it seemed hopeless.

Only one of the miners had a watch, and he used it to keep them alive beyond the time the air should have been exhausted. How was this possible? It isn't a riddle. Since he was the only one who "knew" how much time was really passing, he was able to convince the others that what felt like a passing hour, because of their isolation and panic, was really only a half hour. He was lying, of course, but it did the trick. The miners, convinced that only three hours had passed, were able to survive the six hours it took for the rescuers to dig to them, just as the air was running out. Only one man died ... the man with the watch. Aware of the "impossibility" of survival, he didn't survive.

Now, this is an extreme and possibly apocryphal tale, but it does nicely illustrate two points. The first is one of my favorite philosophies, and I've seen it proven over and over again: that what you believe becomes your reality. The second is that it's possible for people to break the seemingly unassailable hold that time has over them. It's simply a matter of changing the way you think about it. That's all it takes to be the master of time, rather than one of its many, many slaves.