Sunday, August 24, 2008

Redefine, part 2: Time.

Chronology is interesting. Time passes infinitely, like clockwork.

Wait… Clockwork? How does a clock work, exactly? And why do we accept it so blindly? The clock on my wall reads 1:47, while my wristwatch argues, pushing me forward two minutes. The computer, however, has me lagging, calling it 1:40. Which do I choose to accept?
Why does society see no flaw in our system of chronology? Why do we choose to call this moment 1:50 in the morning? I haven’t slept yet, and this is not ‘morning.’ Who’s to say that today and tomorrow (and yesterday, for that matter) aren’t just extensions of one another?

What determines, chronologically, the end of yesterday and the beginning of today? (Midnight, I know, but what is midnight? We, as a population, arbitrarily decide that a ‘day’ will be 24 hours long (plus change), and if we happen to be awake when one day becomes another, we’re expected to simply accept it?) And considering the current time (1:53), where does ‘right now’ fall on that chronology? Is it Monday or Tuesday? I haven’t slept yet… It was Monday two hours ago… what makes it Tuesday all of the sudden? I hate societal definitions. Today is nothing more than yesterday’s tomorrow- tomorrow’s yesterday. One becomes the other. Endlessly. Yesterday will never happen ever again. But who determines its end in the first place? The beat goes on.

Time itself is compressed to fit our standards. We think of everything in terms of relativity.
Occurrences that have yet to occur are in our future, while occurrences that have already occurred are in our past. The last element of our over-simplified definition of time is a tricky one to pin down: the present.

An idea becomes an action, and as soon as that action is preformed, it moves from the future (precognition, premeditation, forethought) to the past (recollection, reminiscence). The transition between the two is instant. The two periods of time (everything to come and everything past) grow infinitely close to one another, never meeting. As soon as an occurrence slips out of the future, it slips into the past. Not once does it stop in the “present.”

The present is a mere euphemism for that transition between tomorrow and yesterday. We think of “Right Now” not as a point, but a segment on the cosmic timeline. Realistically, there are no points on this line. The instant we stop and define a moment as “Right Now,” it’s no longer right then.

1 comment:

JScully said...

What you are seeing here is Danny explain things to himself to make his person larger so he feels he has worth on this moving rock.