The Perception of Time
Have you ever asked, “Where has time gone?” If so, congratulations—you’ve just stumbled into a philosophical wormhole. Einstein, never one to leave a good question unanswered, would probably reply, “Relative to what?” Suddenly, you’re not just missing your keys; you’re missing the very fabric of the universe. Time, as it turns out, is a slippery character—sometimes a hero, sometimes a villain, and always ready to mess with your schedule.
Take my morning, for example. I sat down at 6am to write this essay and finished at 8am. To me, those two hours were a triumph of productivity. To my family, who were hoping for a cake, it was a tragic loss—two hours that could have been spent conjuring up dessert. So, where did my time go? To me, it went to literary greatness (or at least, a finished essay). To my family’s sweet tooth, it vanished into the void of missed opportunities. Time: the ultimate shape-shifter.
Is time subjective? Absolutely. Is it objective? Also, yes. We’ve tamed it with clocks, but our perception of it is as wild as a toddler on a sugar rush. Einstein’s relativity theory tells us that time can stretch and contract depending on how fast you’re moving. So, if you want your workday to fly by, maybe try running laps around the office. I say the human definition of time should be based on perception—preferably the kind that makes Mondays shorter and weekends longer.
When people hear “value of time,” they think money. We monetize our hours at work, at the doctor, even in traffic (where time and money both seem to evaporate). But I’m talking about human value. Our sense of time is shaped by advertisers, trends, celebrities, and politician—basically, anyone with a microphone and an agenda. Remember Henry Ford’s assembly line? It turned time into a competitive sport. Suddenly, value wasn’t about people; it was about who could make more widgets in less time. The human equation got replaced by the bottom line.
Back to my essay: nobody’s paying me for it but finishing in two hours instead of six means I have four extra hours to do things I actually enjoy—like not baking a cake. Perception! As a senior citizen, I’ve realized my time is running out, so every minute feels precious. When I was younger, I thought I had “all the time in the world” —which is probably why I spent so much of it looking for my car keys. During the pandemic, we all got a crash course in time management. Suddenly, puzzles and board games were hot commodities, and “essential workers” discovered that time is only unlimited if you can find toilet paper.
To sum up, let’s borrow a line from Einstein: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.” Time, in the human sense, is all about focus. We tried to pin it down with clocks, but it keeps slipping away—sometimes into productivity, sometimes into cake, and sometimes into the great cosmic joke that is Monday morning.
