The Absence of Time

Abstract

A couple of weeks ago, I was ‘trapped’ finding myself in a race for a watch in a particular watch store. It was my desire to have a sporty and catchy watch twinned around my left hand that made me so full of spirit jumping from one store to another one. A guy, who is the store keeper in one of the watch stores that I visited, gave me an interesting statement. I was staring admirably at two sporty watches, one was a glossy, silver stainless steel watch and another one was an elegant, black stainless steel watch. He gave a comment about them that made me kind of freeze for a few seconds, because then I reflected deeply in my mind. The guy said, “The black one will not last forever because its black paint will erode gradually and so finally you’ll need to get the silver one. It’s not lasting for eternity.”
From that simple and easy statement, I got a powerful word that has been confusing and at the same time intriguing people from generation to generation: eternity. Well, we unavoidably are to be talking about time if we are talking about eternity. Time itself is an abstract since we can’t hold and see it. Should we say that it’s not so because we have clock or watch, actually time is beyond those kind of measuring tools. Time surely could run even if your watch stops ticking! This essay will bring us further to reflect and ponder about time, especially about the big question above: do we really have an absence of time? Time is interesting, let’s take a look!



Trying to Time ‘Time’

Since ancient times, people have been trying to use their minds and knowledge to understand what time is all about. By observing that day and night come and go every day, that the moon changes its appearance form periodically, and so on, people have found one word to help them to live in this world: time.
Julius Caesar, the most famous Roman Emperor, established a calendar that expresses time for a whole year. We find it has influenced the world for a long time even until today. For us living in this era, we probably don’t have any idea about living without a calendar. The use of time is so essential today. The World Football Association, or FIFA, for instance, advanced the planning of its multi-dollar event The World Cup (WC). The upcoming WC 2010 host, which is South Africa, has been revealed a long time before The WC 2006 finished, for instance.
Scientists contribute a big part of human knowledge about timing. They even state time as one of the fundamental quantities in the International System of regulations. According to that regulation, time has common unit names like hours, minutes, and seconds. The last one is commonly used in the physics area.
Interestingly, people try to time ‘time’ itself by establishing many units of it. We perhaps know about milliseconds (0.001s), a day (24 hours or 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds), a year (365 days), a decade (10 years), etc. The smallest measured time known is called attosecond, which is about 10-18s, while millennium comes as the biggest unit of time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time)
If such a word as attosecond sounds unfamiliar to you, let’s go back to the ancient times. We can find human merits to time, ‘time’ with a simple but bright idea that uses the sun. Then we know the sun clock which uses the principle of the sun’s movement in days. Another example of timing time is a famous timing tool, the sand clock. As time goes by, people find more accurate measurements to time ‘time’ and finally we got the winner namely atomic clock. It takes a long time for sure.
The earth is also divided up into parts regarding time differences. Nations agree to establish a system to time the world. The time in The US will be different with time in Singapore. It’s made like that to make humankind easier since we’ll face chaos if it’s not so. Even more, one country usually divides its area according to time. Indonesia, for instance, has three distinct timing areas from Aceh to Papua; West Indonesia Time (Waktu Indonesia Barat/WIB), Central Indonesia Time (Waktu Indonesia Tengah/WITA), and East Indonesia Time (Waktu Indonesia Timur/WIT). With this timing system, the world is seemingly united. People in Australia might find it easy to call and wish others, “Happy New Year!” to their relatives in England or somewhere else.
So then, why do people see it is important to time ‘time’? Why do people need to sweat a lot discovering accurate timing instrument? The answer is simple in that this fact tells people to consider time as an essential thing to lives. Time is so worth to be timed.


Time, a Powerful Word

If there is a word that has been affecting the world and humankind so much, time might be the one. This word is also being used as an inspiration to many people. We probably would find it hard to count books, talk, discuss, or focus on one big theme, which is time itself. There are also magazine, bookstores, and shops that use that word as their brand image. Also, many influential speakers in varied areas of knowledge have been delivering their encouraging speeches about time. Parents always alarm their children to use their time wisely either to study or to do homework. A CEO of a company perhaps will urge his/her employees to work efficiently in a sense of time so that the company will gain much more year to year. Any spiritual leader will be in the same shoes regarding the importance of time usage, as he/she preaches.
If we take a look deeper into the journalistic world, time has been bringing notions to hundreds even thousands of authors. In the early year of 2000, the entire world was suspicious to have the fever of Harry Potter, the fastest-sold out book ever of all time. J.K. Rowling is the one who made this masterpiece to not only children but also adults. Her primary topic actually is about eternity which Voldemort (Potter’s number one enemy) is looking for. Then, Stephenie Meyer took her race in the fiction world writing competition with her series of four books. The first book entitled, Twilight had been a major motion picture in theatres all over the world. Similarly to Rowling, Meyer brings up eternity which is represented in the book’s prominent figure, Edward Cullen who is told as an extremely cold, pale, and handsome vampire. In our abstract above it’s stated that eternity is related to time. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), a famous philosopher, states one sentence that describes the relation between time and eternity: “as if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” Rowling and Meyer seem to understand this idea; they use words like time and eternity as their stepping stones to success.
By observing two paragraphs above we can see clearly the power of a magnificent word time both in the non-fiction and fiction worlds. It is then undisputed again that time has engaged its influence to be so powerful in people’s life since we can basically divide the world as non-fiction or real and fiction world. At the end of the day, people might admit that time is a powerful word indeed.



HALT!

You might be wondering about the title of this part: Halt! What does it mean? Shall we stop discussing at this point? Is this part the end of our discussion? No! The title HALT is meant as an abbreviation of four distinctive words; H stands for heat, A is there for air, L is Light, and finally T is for time. Well, let’s stop by in the hall of science, just for a little bit, to make a comparison to our main topic.
Flashing back to primary or secondary school, we probably might have a memory about simple science experiments dealing with thermometers and stuff. Yes, it talks about heat. For those who do not learn about thermodynamics (one branch of physics) they might not understand fully the true concept of heat itself. Let’s try; if you are asked the way a refrigerator works, what comes to your mind? Mostly common for people would be the answer that the refrigerator blows cold air so that your apple inside becomes cooler. If yours is also like this, you get a big zero.
Actually, there is no such coldness. When you feel something cold, it is because heat is gone from that thing. A physicist defines that concept to be the correct one. Our refrigerator is essentially a machine which is able to take heat from fruits or vegetables inside it. In such a way, technicians make it possible. Another example, if you are standing on the top of Everest Mountain, you might be attacked by extremely cold air and then you feel coldness enters your body. The true fact is not like that; however, your body’s heat is actually flowing out. So, it allows you to freeze to death. In a short sentence, we could experience both the existence and absence of heat.
So luckily the earth is filled with air. Oxygen, mixed in the air, is one of our main fundamental requirements to live. It’s hard to imagine if air is gone from the earth, surely humankind is in danger. However, we still could find a place that doesn’t have air at all, space. Science experts name it a vacuum, the absent condition of the existence of air.
Same as heat and air, light, which is considered to be particles and waves acts to have an absent condition called darkness. When a lamp in a room is turned on, it glows so that the room becomes apparently lit. You might have the experience in turning on and off gradually your computer monitor’s brightness. What you do here is just simply take out the light a little bit repeatedly until you find your monitor absolutely black (or almost black). Darkness is actually the absence of light itself. Humankind has been able to conclude that our universe is dark. Light doesn’t exist there. So, we can’t darken space anymore. The absence of light is darkness and we can’t go further to darker its circumstance.
Now, how about our big T? Does time have an absent condition? Time is very unique compared to those three matters. According to me personally as a human, time doesn’t have absence. It’s true that we can measure time with our watch or clock. Then, if your very expensive and classy watch stops ticking because it runs out of battery energy, does it mean time is absent? Does the world stop just like your watch? Does your heart also stop beating? There is no bigger kind of question.
Even if the famous Big Ben clock in London stops working, time is still running. When Soekarno (the first Indonesia president) hadn’t been born yet, time was still running. When moon-walk-dance-master Michael Jackson passed away, time still ran on. Time is very indescribable. It is running with and without our existence and we do not know what it was before time existed for we haven’t existed yet nor what it will be when we all have gone.
How about eternity? Is that the absent condition of time? Well, it might be true. But we would never experience eternity in this world because we are perishable living beings. No one lives forever. That’s why I said before that personally as human I state that time doesn’t have absence. It’s because I can’t get it, neither can you. So, for us we live inside the time-span itself. That’s why humankind is unlikely to reveal the mystery of time. Again, time is running either with or without us.


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If time always runs and never stops, then how should we act? Many wise persons in this world since ancient time encourage us with their statement about effectiveness in the use of time. U.S. founding father, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) once said to the crowd: “never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.” (http://quotations.about.com) He teaches us not to waste even down time since it will not wait for us to catch up to every thing. Time will go on always.
John Piper (2003) wrote in his book and gave it the title, Don’t Waste Your Life. Here he feels it so important primarily for young people not to waste their life. He pinpoints many boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, who are not aware actually that they don’t use time for its good. The last person to mention here is the blind-born-but-excellent girl, Helen Keller. She was interested in how people spend time. She states a touching quote for each one of us: (http://thinkexist.com)


“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil.
If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own track of ennui”

At the end of my effort of finding a sporty and catchy watch, I finally chose the silver one. It’s not because I’m persuaded by that man about eternity. After pondering for a few seconds, I smiled to myself hearing about him. My heart and mind agreed that either this silver or black watch will not be able to last for eternity. Someday it will stop ticking because of running out of a battery. Someday, perhaps I might slap my watch to a wall by accident and a scratch may appear on its shiny silver stainless steel. So, I chose the silver one merely because I love silver rather than black.
By understanding that as long as we are still living beings we will not experience the absence of time. We should use it effectively, efficiently, and wisely. Franklin, Piper, and Keller had taught us so much as how to appreciate the time we have. Whether you are a university student or teacher or lawyer or CEO or spiritual leader or president, you need to appreciate time. It’s mainly because, once again, time will be still running either with or without us.



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