The Subjective Beauty of Time

There is a reason why I enjoy watching Doctor Who series. Remember that legendary episode in which the Doctor told you not to blink? I’ve become wary of statues ever since, but that’s not the point. The Doctor described time as a timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly stuff. While it wasn’t the best explanation, I couldn’t agree more.

Most people see time as a boring, linear series of events. One beginning leads to one end –a newborn baby, a dead veteran. Probably because time has a strict rule of seconds, minutes, hours, days and so on. One minute is sixty seconds. One hour is sixty minutes and so on.

However, there is nothing rigid when it comes to humans. Anomaly happened, rules bent, law broken. We think that the universe works in a strict, systematic fashion of beginning to end, and while it is true, we cannot oversee the fact that it also works in a strong, intangible fashion of cause and effect.

Imagine sitting in front of your computer. You want to download something. Let’s say, the latest episode of The X-Files from a torrent source. That’s so me, by the way. You click on the download button and your torrent client shows up on your screen. Ok. Ok. Done. You are now downloading a 300MB something mp4 file. Estimated download time: five minutes. Depending on how fast your connection normally is, you either react with a “Hang on, how is that possible?” or a “What the hell, it’s so slow!”

First world problem.

What I’m trying to say is time is both fast and slow, in other word, relative. As a human, we live in a world where our perception of time has been altered. I was born in 1994, not at the time where sun shone a little bit too bright and one of my aunt had just given birth to a healthy little baby boy and the road was somehow empty outside the hospital.

However, ask my dad about it and he’d say that it was one of the slowest, painful half an hour he’d ever been in his life. Ask my mom about it and she’d say it just happened so fast, I barely remember because I was anesthetised –you were born through C-section –and suddenly you were there; I heard your first cry.

Now imagine a defendant on his final trial. The judge is about to read his verdict and his near future, at least, is written on that bunch of papers on his hand. Imagine being the defendant, sitting in the middle of the court, listening to the verdict word by word, sentence by sentence. Imagine the victim sitting across the defendant. Same situation, same location, same time frame.

Seven years in prison, the judge finally says.

The defendant breaths out. Seven years is tough. At least, he won’t have to worry about foods and shelter for the next seven years.

The victim breaths out. Seven years is not enough compared to what he’s been through. He should be there longer. Seven years will pass in a blink and he’ll soon be out there.

Seven years means 84 months. 365 weeks. 2,555 days. 61,320 hours. 220,752,000 seconds.

If time was merely linear, a straight line that went from one point to another, the phrase “time flies” would be a total lie, as well as the urge to skip thing you can’t avoid and be done with it.

The beauty of time lies on the infinite way to describe it, the subjectivity that every individual brings to its meaning. We can be here, at the same time and space, but my time might have a different pace with yours. My clock might say 12.06 PM but does it mean the same to everyone? Do you think 12.06 PM only means that it’s six minutes past midday? Is it correct to refer to it as midday? Because the sun might not even be right above your head during this exact set of numbers.

While we might be immersed on the idea of time-traveling and all, don't you think that in a more humble fashion, the different meaning people give to their time is the beauty of time itself?

I have been sitting and typing this long-ass opinion for the past hour. You can finish reading this in less than five minutes. Beautiful, isn’t it?