“I Just Don’t Have the Time”
How often have you and I heard that phrase when we’ve brought someone’s attention to the opportunity to meet with someone, attend an event, look at a way of improving their income, or even a free holiday or break?
Well, what they say is absolutely right and completely true.
No-one has time.
You see, time doesn’t exist.
Time is just a concept, a figment of our collective human imagination.
(Although I believe there are some tribes in very remote places who don’t share this idea – yet).
No other species has any concept of ‘time’.
Certainly, they recognise day and night – when it’s dark and when it isn’t, and they recognise the seasons, where the ambient temperature and the balance between dark and light changes.
But only humans use clocks.
Only humans divide up the rotations and orbits of the planet into linear segments of existence.
Only humans attempt to measure time.
In fact, ‘measuring’ anything (and everything) is unique to our species, it’s one of those things that makes you and I ‘human’.
Other species use tools, and other species work collectively, but there are no health & safety experts or time management and productivity analysts in a beehive measuring how much honey is being made.
The bees just get on with it, they produce what they need, without ‘measuring’ anything.
You and I and the rest of humanity use the concept of ‘time’ to get to grips with how we relate our lives to what we do.
In advanced research in all branches of physics and quantum mechanics there’s no tangible quantification of time. It’s a ‘given’ and unlike measurements of length, volume and so on there’s nothing to compare time against.
Length is measured by comparison. The average human foot being an example – so if something is ten feet long then that’s ten ‘foot lengths’.
But time is measured by dividing up the ‘time’ it takes for the earth to rotate on its axis – but that’s comparing something with itself.
Unlike length or volume or weight, time is not real.
(There are more modern ‘scientific’ definitions of all these measures but the definition of any segment of ‘time’ is still by comparison with itself)
But time is not just a concept.
Time is a tyranny. Time is a tyrant.
Most of humanity, including you and I, subjugate ourselves voluntarily to this dictatorship – without even thinking about it.
You and I are pressured into running our lives according to what ‘time’ it is, what ‘day’ it is, what ‘month’ it is, and what ‘year’ it is.
People have concepts about how long they are expected to live based not on who they are or what they want to be, do or have in their lives, but on how ‘old’ they are.
I know people who have lived for many fewer years than I have who think and behave ‘older’ than I do – just because that’s what they expect.
But you and I can live as ‘long’ as we want – provided we have a plan to do so and are not bamboozled by ‘time’ into thinking we only have a certain life span.
People worry too much about ‘how long’ something will take to do rather than just getting on with it.
People get hung up about how to ‘manage’ time but it’s impossible to manage something that doesn’t exist.
When something has to be done it takes as ‘long’ as it takes.
The only occasion that ‘time’ comes into play is as a basis of co-ordination of the various events that occur in our lives.
In order for you and I to meet up we need to have some sort of reference so that we arrive at the meeting place together.
But instead of just using it as a reference for meetings, events or navigation everyone has become hung up on measuring time.
Most people in employment don’t get paid for what they do, they get paid for their ‘time’, the ‘time’ they ‘spend’ ‘at work’.
And then they are ‘generously’ (or not) given ‘time off’ to do the other things they need or want to do.
People think of time (which doesn’t exist) as currency but the flaw in ‘time economics’ is that unlike money, (which actually isn’t ‘real’ either but that’s another story) time cannot be circulated or revalued.
At least not within the concept that most people have about time.
You see, other than as a mere reference system, time has no value, no value at all.
But you and I always have ‘time’ – in the sense that we have the opportunity, at any ‘time’, to choose whatever we want to do, or not do.
And what you and I choose – think about it – has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘time’.
“Live long and prosper”