A Brief Story of Time - by Oliver Martin
Time? What an ingenious topic, in Oliver Martin’s opinion. Everything human beings do and experience happens in a moment. We cannot say how long it takes until an event occurs — if at all. Only one thing is clear: one day, we are no longer here. A logical consequence of life.
How often have you heard the sentence: Life is short or too short! Everybody wants to tell you what to do and how to behave — starting as a child when your parents tell you what they think. Oliver Martin must admit he does not think much of this statement. Many act in the here and now, which is actually very good and reasonable from a spiritual point of view.
In a world where the pressure is noticeable every day and we have less and less time, this topic is more important than ever. The influence of social media is of course very present and a huge issue. Oliver Martin could write a whole book about time and would blow up every frame of that book. For this reason, he keeps it very brief. Every day, each of us faces this issue — consciously or unconsciously. Some count the seconds, minutes or hours of a day. How often does one experience the situation where even close friends fail to reply to a message or simply stick to an appointment or deadline? The ridiculous reasoning: I don’t have time!!! Wow.
A woman wants to meet a man or vice versa. The response times are getting longer and longer, Oliver Martin has noticed and has talked to over 500 people who share a similar opinion. Some people no longer reply at all because they are so “busy”. Oliver Martin sees it like this: if someone is not able to answer, to keep appointments or to perceive them, they are either mercilessly overwhelmed or have too much to expect. Of course, such people will never admit that they are overwhelmed and continue to behave exactly the same — regardless of whether this is important to other people or not.
It Depends on Culture
It should be mentioned that this varies from country to country, from culture to culture. In Switzerland, people have learned since birth that punctuality is something very important. However, over the years, many in Switzerland have lost and abandoned this principle. In some cultures, it is considered “normal” to show up an hour late for an appointment. Yes, in some companies or places, ignoring or neglecting time has drastic consequences. It can even be a matter of life and death in many situations.
So this topic is more than ever incredibly important for all of us. Do you take it personally when someone stands you up for an appointment — private or business? Imagine you have prepared well for a meeting with a person who is important to you, and they cancel 10 minutes before. Opinions differ here, of course. One might say: It doesn’t matter / Something came up / There was an emergency / He or she forgot / Can happen to anyone. But Oliver Martin asks: Do you want to continue spending time with such people? Because (except in the case of a real emergency), 90% of the time it’s just excuses — sometimes even incredibly cheap ones. Those who do not respect your time do not deserve to spend time with you in the future. Unfortunately, this also happens with friends, family, and important people. Of course, there are exceptional situations where one must endure this.
Life Instead of Time
At this point, Oliver Martin would like to make a few incredibly important points.
Replace the word time with the word life. Some examples:
“I have no time for you today” could mean: “I have no life for you today.”
“I have too much to do and unfortunately can’t meet you” means: “I have no life for you.”
“I have no time to do sports” becomes: “I have no life to do sports.”
Quite simple, actually — all excuses for not doing something.
“I don’t have time to go to this class.”
Do you see where this is going?
Definition
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession — from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change in material reality or in conscious experience. Time is often referred to as a fourth dimension, along with three spatial dimensions.
Time has long been an important subject of study in religion, philosophy, and science. But defining it in a way applicable to all fields without circularity has consistently eluded scholars. Nevertheless, diverse fields such as business, industry, sports, science, and the performing arts all incorporate some notion of time into their respective measuring systems.
Time in physics is operationally defined as “what a clock reads.”
The physical nature of time is addressed by general relativity with respect to events in space-time. Examples of events are the collision of two particles, the explosion of a supernova, or the arrival of a rocket ship. Every event can be assigned four numbers representing its time and position (the event’s coordinates). However, the numerical values are different for different observers. In general relativity, the question of what time it is “now” only has meaning relative to a particular observer. Distance and time are intimately related, and the time required for light to travel a specific distance is the same for all observers, as first demonstrated by Michelson and Morley. General relativity does not address the nature of time for extremely small intervals where quantum mechanics holds. At this time, there is no generally accepted theory of quantum general relativity.
Scientific Perspective
Time is one of the seven fundamental physical quantities in both the International System of Units (SI) and the International System of Quantities. The SI base unit of time is the second. Time is used to define other quantities — such as velocity — so defining time in terms of such quantities would result in circularity of definition. An operational definition of time — wherein one says that observing a certain number of repetitions of one or another standard cyclical event (such as the passage of a free-swinging pendulum) constitutes one standard unit, such as the second — is highly useful in the conduct of both advanced experiments and everyday life. To describe observations of an event, a location (position in space) and time are typically noted.
The operational definition of time does not address its fundamental nature. It does not answer why events can happen forward and backward in space, but only forward in time. Investigations into the relationship between space and time led physicists to define the spacetime continuum. General relativity is the primary framework for understanding how spacetime works. Through theoretical and experimental advances, it has been shown that time can be distorted and dilated — particularly at the edges of black holes.
Final Thoughts
Temporal measurement has occupied scientists and technologists and was a prime motivation in navigation and astronomy. Periodic events and motion have long served as standards for units of time — such as the apparent motion of the sun, moon phases, a swinging pendulum, or a heartbeat. Currently, the international unit of time, the second, is defined by measuring the electronic transition frequency of caesium atoms. Time is also of great social significance — with both economic value (“time is money”) and personal value, due to the awareness of the limited time in each day and each human life.
There are many systems for determining what time it is — including the Global Positioning System (GPS), other satellite systems, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), and mean solar time. In general, the numbers obtained from different systems vary.