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Moves on, nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it." … (Omar Khayyám)
In physics and other sciences, time is considered one of the few fundamental quantities. Time is used to define other quantities – such as velocity – and defining time in terms of such quantities would result in circularity of definition. Among prominent philosophers, there are two distinct viewpoints on time. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. Time travel, in this view, becomes a possibility as other "times" persist like frames of a film strip, spread out across the time line. Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time. The opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of "container" that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead part of a fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which humans sequence and compare events. This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is not itself measurable nor can it be travelled.
But what is Time in simple words to simple people, those who live and face it on a daily basis. What is time and what relation you have with it, is a subject to each one of us. Time is one, and yet it is individual for everyone.
“TIME – YOUR BEST ASSET”
In Western Europe, a human life lasts on average 30,000 days and nights. This is our capital, our asset allocated to each individual. This makes it seem unreasonable, even inhuman, that time should have become classified as rationed goods. How did it come about – after half-a-century of steadily improving standards of living – that we moved from the calm pace of living in the 1950s to one that feels hectic, even erratic, rather than rhythmical? Perhaps the most important reason is the flexibility of the human mind. Our built-on mental rhythms are adaptable to a degree that can be counterproductive in every sense of this term. Human creativity has to stay tuned to the demands of the machinery, and so people become less able to control their time-keeping. In other words, human sensitivity and flexibility are in conflict with the technology’s predictability, lack of imagination and resistance to change. Or to put it another way, human beings, who are forgetful, illogical, disorganized and emotional, are trying to co-exist with the technical devices that have excellent memories and are precise, logical, highly organized and reliable, but not adaptable. Guess which will eventually have to give way…
In evolutionary terms, this is a new problem for humans. Until recently, no one had made any connection between timekeeping and human characteristics. Leonardo DaVinci’s famous image of a man as the measure of all things is based on geometry. He felt no need clearly, to consider anything more than a three-dimensional universe made up of lines, surfaces, volumes and their relative relationships. Nowadays, we feel the need for a fourth dimension, a new image of a man as the measure of time, that no one has yet invented.
This is an attempt to see how an individual can co-exist with the time phenomenon. You cannot stop time, but you can try to make use of it; Try to “employ” time and see if you can become the master. Once you fail to do so, try to make a deal with time on even terms: make it your even partner. Organize yourself in a right way and see how time will become your ally, serving you and helping to achieve a better result in whatever you do.
The Value of Time
You may have seen this popular, unaccredited e-mail that has widely circulated on the Internet:
• To realize the value of one year, ask a student who failed a grade.
• To realize the value of one month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.
• To realize the value of one week, ask the editor of a weekly newspaper.
• To realize the value of one hour, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.
• To realize the value of one second, ask the person who just avoided a traffic accident.
• To realize the value of one millisecond, ask the person who won an Olympic medal.
Time has a value greater than any currency. We may leave our children the money we don’t use in our own lifetimes, but we cannot leave them one millisecond of time.
