In this space, choose one (or more) elements of time as outlined by Lightman. Use a direct quotation from the novel as a heading. Explain how you see this element of time work out in your own life. Please be specific. Interact with each other.
“The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.” - Alan Lightman
“Where the two times meet, desperation. Where the two times go their separate ways, contentment. For miraculously, a barrister, a nurse, a baker can make a world in either time, but not in both times. Each time is true, but truths are not the same” (21).
ReplyDeleteI feel this “desperation” all the time, as more and more of my life is scheduled. Even meeting with people is planned out, and I am definitely drawn to body time. How often am I scheduled to stand before a room of people and teach as a bell rings? My whole day is bells. Watches. Clocks. Then it is a phone telling me when to pick up my son. When to get to the YMCA for his lesson, which gives me 45 minutes to work out, before I get home and prepare dinner before my wife arrives at 5:45. Then, we talk about all the things we did not get to and must plan the following day. My son is instructed to read for 20 minutes. Play piano for 20 minutes. Do XtraMath for 10 minutes. At 7:45 we get ready for bed. We brush our teeth. Get dressed in pajamas. Read a story. Set an alarm, where I do the math to see the maximum amount of sleep I can get, which usually brings me to 5:45. I will get up and make breakfast and be done by 6:30, so I can shower and dress and leave by 7:00 in order to get here around 7:20 to begin teaching at 7:43. Wait! I am ahead of myself. Sleep. My sleep app says I will sleep for 6 hours and 42 minutes. My son says he is not tired, but he must go to sleep because it is time.
This one time. We had a snow day. Snowed in kind of a storm. It was the first snow day, which feels better than the fifth. My wife, son and myself took a nap. No scheduled time. We were all tired. Snow outside. No cars on the road. Vince Guaraldi playing. I closed my eyes knowing that when I wake up, anything is possible.
“They hardly look at their watches and cannot tell you if it’s Monday or Thursday. When others rush by them and scoff, they just smile”.
ReplyDeleteThe concepts of time, mechanical and body, is one of the only elements outlined by Lightman that is apparent in my everyday life. I feel that I am often a slave to mechanical time as are most others. Instead of waking up when my body tells me to, everyday I set an alarm based on what I need to do that day. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it is for 5 am, because that is time to go to the gym. Tuesdays and Thursdays it is 6:30, because that is time to get ready for school. Even on weekends there are various alarms and timers set for work, sports, and other commitments. I find myself more enslaved to Mechanical time than the rest of my family, whether this is a form of OCD or just a preference it is always apparent in my life. I expect to eat dinner between 5 and 6:30 every night, because that is considered the right time. When we often don’t eat until after seven, my family notices that I get visibly annoyed with the disorganization. Even after rising by the sound of my phone alarm I am on a set schedule. I am always in my car ready to leave at 7:15, which often doesn’t happen because my brother follows his body’s time to be ready for school. Over the past years, I have tried to adapt to living by body time, as it seems like a much less stressful and enjoyable way of life. However it is difficult to live in this “mountain time” that passes slower when everyone else is rushing at “city time” to get ahead. In Andover, especially among High school students (including myself), most rush by mechanical and city time for fear of being left behind.
I can relate to this- I set a ton of alarms and always do everything at the same time, and get annoyed when something is late or not at the usual time. I find time especially frustrating in the morning when my siblings wake up late because I am always ready at the same time, but they get ready at different paces everyday.
DeleteCat Weiner
“Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly” (6).
ReplyDeleteI often feel, especially during the school year, the true repetitive nature of time. Waking up to the same alarms, eating the same meals, seeing the same people day in and day out. Sometimes it comes to such a frustrating point that I crave something new and different. A trip into Boston, food at a new restaurant, a sleepover at a friend’s house. These things add variety to my extremely repetitive life. At light of this I find vacations essential- they take me away from my everyday schedule of waking up, going to school, babysitting, doing homework, watching tv and finally sleeping. I enjoy how vacations give opportunity to new schedules, and more time for new and different experiences. Time is exhausting, I feel like there is no escape of it and no escape of responsibilities. For the rest of the school year I will continue my pattern no matter how bored I become with it. It never stops, just like a circle, endlessly continuing.
Cat Weiner
I agree- vacations really make a difference to your life as they give you a chance to somewhat let go of time for a little bit. I feel that whenever I take a vacation, I run on a whole different time as I am in a new place and I feel that I am not dictated by alarms and clocks.
Delete“No more than an ant crawling round the rim of a crystal chandelier knows that it will return to where it began”
ReplyDeleteI find this idea reassuring yet frightening at the same time. I often lie awake at night, trying to fall asleep while all my mind wants to do is think. Think about what I could have done better in the past, or how to prepare myself for every unforeseeable event the following day so I can do “better”. As this is exhausting, I oftentimes have to remind myself (or someone else reminds me, because I’m too caught up in my own thoughts) that the events and future that I’m worrying about is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The idea that a life repeats itself (and if I were to know this) would be reassuring as I know that I have multiple opportunities to live it. In my mind, it decreases the pressure I place on myself to live this life “perfectly”. That being said, it wouldn’t quite work if we forget that we’re continuously re-living the same life and the same time. If we remembered, it would be a different time, and a different life. So ultimately, the idea scares me because it’s so uncertain. Are we on a never ending treadmill in which we re-live the same pain, the same issues, but also experience the same happiness, and the same incredible moments time after time after time? How do we know if we’re living a life that we’ve already lived? Whoa.
Sosha
I can relate to this so much! It's hard for me to fall asleep now because my brain keeps replaying the mistakes I've done in the past. One of my coaches once told me that I'm too focused on my past mistakes to the point that I can't move on.
Delete“They know that with each downward step, time passes just a little bit faster and they age a little more quickly” (24).
ReplyDeleteIn this generation, everyone seems like they are busy with something. We can’t stop to take a breath and rest because the world doesn’t stop for us. I was at the Museum of Fine Arts with my mom, and I was amazed by how beautiful and detailed the furnitures are. They are not plain like the modern ones. They are carved with these designs that literally blew my mind. The clothes that people wore in the paintings are gorgeous. Where did people find the time to make them, without using any high-tech machines? Sometimes I feel like I’m chasing after time like there’s no tomorrow, or that I have to be constantly doing something meaningful to make myself feel better, to make myself satisfied.
On a side note, it feels like kindergarten was just yesterday. Memories of elementary school and middle school are slowly fading away, but I remember specifically that I wasn’t worried about my future at all. I wasn’t worried about losing time because I was living at the moment, enjoying being present at the time. Obviously I should think about my future now, but wow, time does go by faster and faster as I age. I can’t believe I’m going to college soon.
I really like this connection and I feel like we can all relate to this in some capacity- how come someone had time to carve intricate designs into furniture and it sometimes feels like we barely have time to tie our shoes? Something that really messes with my head is that a year feels shorter as you get older because it becomes an increasingly smaller fraction of your life. In kindergarten, we would have asked questions such as how? and why? when we saw pieces of art like the ones you saw, but now all we can think of is when?. It seems so crazy that this person spent so much time on something like this, and we spend all of our time preparing for our future.
Delete“In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time” (18).
ReplyDeleteI feel that each day of my life right now is run by a clock counting down or up the hours, minutes, or seconds I have to do something. I pack everything I will need for the day the night before or else, I will be disorganized and will worry about being late and getting stuck in all of the traffic around the school. When I wake up in the morning at 6:15, I get ready in the exact same order everyday arriving at school around 7:20. However, there are also times when I feel that I have all the time in the world, even when in reality I do not. If I do not have time to do take notes, I’ll say, oh I have time to do that tomorrow, but then tomorrow comes are there are more things I have to do that will each take up a certain amount of time. Everyday, I feel like I go through the same mechanical motions that just go on over and over again like waking up, driving to school, going from class to class until the end of the day, coming home, then going to various activities, having dinner, and then going to sleep.
However, time changes completely for me when something in my life is suddenly not the same. Similar to Cat, when I am on vacation, especially in another place, I feel that I am in another world; I am not thinking about how much time I have to do something and what is going to happen next. I feel that there are two times in my life: one run by mechanical time and the other run by body time that each make me think differently about what I am experiencing in life.
I totally agree with the feeling of doing certain tasks at the exact same time each day, in the same order, with the same people, etc. It becomes really monotonous. I'm always surprised with what a tiny shift in routine can do for you. I sometimes just shift the order of getting ready in the morning, and it makes me feel more "alive" and not like I'm just following a routine mindlessly...if that makes any sense :) -Sosha
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete“Where the two times meet”
ReplyDeleteIn the “24 April 1905” section of Einstein’s Dreams, the author, Alan Lightman, lays out a few concepts which I find myself identifying immensely with; “mechanical time” and “body time”. For Lightman, people either follow mechanical time, where the world adheres to a series of schedules and routines, and the passage of time is an ever present force, or body time, where life is simply life, meant to be savored and experienced as it is, without any plans or deadlines. This dichotomy between living according to heart and living according to the clock is something that plagues my everyday life. I am a very time conscious person, never being late for an appointment, anguishing in missed school days, and always aware of all the assignment deadlines I have to meet. This type of mindset, where time is limited and always ticking away to the next obligation or due date, has lead me to impose a strict daily routine on myself. I wake up at 5:45, eat breakfast at 6:20, take medicine at 6:30, wash up at 6:40, pack my bag at 6:45, go to the bus stop at 6:50, take ADHD pills when I come home at 3:00, study and do homework until 7:00, ect. This highly organized lifestyle, while completely arbitrary in the grand scheme of things, does its job by perpetuating a constant feeling of progress and productivity. For people like me who are academically minded and time sensitive, it feels necessary to feel like you are achieving something or completing some task that you need to do (or at least putting in the effort to do so), otherwise you feel like you are failing by wasting time while the impending doom of the deadline creeps ever closer. This constant anxiety has driven me to make some less than ideal compromises; taking ADHD medicine after school each day to help me get work done even though it puts me in an emotionally sterile stupor and destroys my ability to sleep, foregoing time with friends to preemptively tackle a far from due assignment, and skipping every lunch freshman year to complete all my homework before I got home. However, I wouldn’t find myself so perpetually troubled and anxious if I have completely committed myself to mechanical time. In reality, while I done much to avoid it as possible, I often find myself subjected to body time as well, wiling away time I allotted myself for study, watching youtube and playing video games, the hours slipping through my fingers before I even knew they were there, enjoying myself in the moment and cursing myself when it is over. Lightman couldn’t have been more right when he wrote that “where the two times meet [there is], desperation.” My adherence to my work schedules and awareness of time's fleeting nature has found itself at odds with my propensity to forget the passage of time and content myself with distractions, a confrontation between different parts of myself that has left me ravaged my stress and frustration.
"In this world, time is like a flow of water, occasionally displaced by a bit of debris, a passing breeze." (10)
ReplyDeleteTime is never ending- like the flow of water in great river. But it is not unchanging. I am not my parents and the world I live in is the same as theirs when they were my age. The breezes of change will forever swirl and mold time into countless different shapes. The changes in my time in high school have been defined by the domination of smartphones, the heightened intensity of college applications, the decline of love for the outdoors, and the push for inclusiveness in mainstream society. They are not all positive developments; in fact, many from the older generations might characterize their cumulative effect as negative. I couldn't care less. I didn't choose what time I was born into, but I can choose to enjoy the time that I was given. I'm only going to be young for so long. While I am, I need to embrace change and figure out how I can best adapt myself to live my life in the modern time to the fullest.
A couple of months ago, I stopped competitively swimming for a club team. It wasn’t because of an injury, nor was it really because of a lack in time- although I will admit that it did play a role. But the primary reason was because I had stopped enjoying the activity and could see no paths forward after high school. Almost everyone I talked to had a negative take on my decision. I was told that it had been my “final year” and to not be a quitter. I honestly don’t care, embracing the parts of my life that I am interested in and dropping the parts that I do not enjoy is far more important. I am not a quitter. I only seek to turn my time into a life well-lived.
This is a very interesting interpretation of this quote, Michael. I can definitely relate to your anecdote in which you described how you didn't let anyone else but yourself dictate what was the best way to spend your free time. Time is limited, and by focusing on the activities or hobbies that you enjoy, you can truly make the best out of it.
DeleteI found this very inspiring as you have defied the common mentality that many of us share, in just "getting through it". By continuing an activity that holds little meaning to us, it may, eventually, feel pointless and stem us away from our happiness. Quitting the activity, can feel so freeing and rewarding that you feel renewed, as you experienced.
Delete“For in this world, people have no memories”
ReplyDeleteWhen I first began reading this book it automatically raised a sense of anxiety over such a conceptual and subjective topic such as time. I began reading and the next thing I knew it had been four hours and I had finished the book. What a funny thing that those four hours felt like 4 minutes as I flipped from one world to the next. Time is something I have struggles with understanding for a long time and to this day I can not quite align with the arbitrary labels that we have places around such an obscure and immeasurable thing as time. Time is rhythm and time is ever changing. This world, the world with no time was particularly my favorite due to the fact that time is ever changing. With no memory one can live a different sense of time from morning until night and then begin again. Though seemingly terrifying as our memories are everything to us, the thought of every experience having the static and exciting energy surrounding it could be so liberating. To know of your life only from a book and to chose to ignore that and live unknowingly of the good and evils that have been committed, to live completely care free and seemingly innocent everyday of your life not knowing if or when you could have ever caused harm would be a life of true ignorant bliss.
“For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present”
I also found this world to be particularly striking as it is a world embodying everything that we are told not to do. A world where people close themselves off within their brains and within one memory of when all was well and good and they become stuck there, alone and unaware of what has become of the world living on in the present. It is the complete opposite somewhat of the world with no memory being a world within one singular memory. The part with the mother writing letters to her son was just particularly heartbreaking and painful to read.
I had the same exact experience. I immediately felt anxious while reading the first page, and thought to myself that this was going to be a difficult read. But instantaneously, that thought seemed ridiculous a few seconds later. The fact it describes the relations between time and how it plays a role in our lives made it very enjoyable and in a way therapeutic.
Delete“At every point of decision, whether to visit a women in Fribourg or to buy a new coat, the world splits into three worlds.”
ReplyDeleteSometimes I obsess over the past, constantly asking myself “What could I have done better?” or “What would things be like if I chose that path instead?” Of course, the answers to these questions are sometimes hard to find because one can only guess as to what would happen had they made a different decision. This happens to me a lot during tests when I put down the right answer, erase it, and then put the wrong one. When I get my test back I get really mad at myself and have to remember that getting one question wrong on a test is not the end of the world. I also think to major decisions in my life like when I was deciding whether to attend a public or private high school. Even though I never really considered going to private school I sometimes wonder how different or how similar my life would be to the way it is now. I try to not think about decisions I have made in the past because what is done is done and cannot be changed. I try to be a forward thinking person that strives to make the most logical decision so that I won’t ever look back and want to redo something. There is also the butterfly effect where even the most minuscule of changes can result in a much more massive change in the future. I wonder if things as simple as dust on my jacket actually play a huge role.
I understand this completely. I think the same way, especially with the public vs private high school. As we submit our college applications I constantly wonder if my GPA would be higher if I went to a private school or if I would have a better resume. Not knowing drives me crazy, as I always want concrete answers to everything.
DeleteI also instinctively though about the butterfly effect when reading that chapter with the Klausens. Lightman's whole description of the generational choices made perfectly encapsulates the theory of how every decision affects the whole interconnected universe, even on a microscopic level. I suppose the book would agree. I also try to keep your attitude about not ever looking back. Analyze your mistakes, don't do them again, and move on. Anger only hurts ourselves.
DeleteAnna Vrountas
ReplyDelete“For they fear that any change they make in the past could have drastic consequences for the future.”
I often obsess over small things in my life, out of fear that they will end up having a much bigger impact in the future than they seem they will in the present. I worry about how much I should study for tests. If I study a lot, I’m worried I did too much and either wasted my time or overstudied and I’ll make careless errors on the test. If I don’t study a lot, I’m afraid I didn’t do enough, and either can’t sleep, or go back and study some more. I worry about interactions with other people. Sometimes I wish I could go back and do something to make someone else feel more comfortable, stand up for them, or just include them more. When I think of the perfect comeback as I’m trying to fall asleep in an argument I had three years ago, I wish I could go back and say it. All of these things stress me out. What if I had made more of an effort to be friends with that person? Would we still be friends today? How would my life be different if I had? Does this test really determine whether I’ll get into a certain college? It might. But I think the best way to suppress this kind of stress is to just have faith that everything happens for a reason, and to not live in the past thinking about all of the what ifs.
“In time, people have forgotten why higher is better. Nonetheless, they continue to live on the mountains… They have convinced themselves that thin air is good for their bodies… At length, the populace have become thin like the air, bony, old before their time.”
ReplyDeleteThe element of time outlined in the last passage spoke of humans vain race against time. I found this passage, and especially the quotation above, extremely fascinating and relevent because what I got out of it was that we wear ourselves thin trying to get ahead in this invisible competition, that we don’t even see our own madness. We are always comparing oursleves to others and trying to get ahead and “beat” other people and I am also guilty of this. I noticed that in my own life, there are so many tings that I do that I do solely for the purpose that “it will look good on college applications” or some other reason that is not just because I enjoy it. And why do we do this? So many things have been turned into a competition that our lives are filled with so many unneccesary stressers and distractions. Like the people living high in the mountains. They want to build the highest house so they can look down on their neighbors and live longer. But in the process of trying to achieve more life, they are wasting away time by worrying about living longer and how to achieve that, and living in a constant race against time instead of enjoying and cultivating the time they do have.
“ In this world there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay.”
ReplyDeleteThis scenario is one that sticks out to me in my daily life, especially in my sleep habits. The habits of the people around me definitely drive a wedge between the actual time and my body time. My dad wakes up my brother and sister and I each morning at 6:00 am sharp, but we all know that we have some time before he comes back for the dreaded second wake up, which is usually not so friendly. I usually do not open my eyes until much later than 6:00, when I hear the shower turn off down stairs. Then, I jump out of bed as fast as I can so my parents will think I was getting ready. It could be 6:15, it could be 6:45 and it would not affect me whatsoever because all I think about is the shower turning off. On some days, eleven o’clock at night feels the same as twelve in the afternoon. Other days, it feels too late to be awake. My schedule is inconsistent throughout the week, so times don’t mean much to me. On Monday nights, finishing up homework and getting to bed later than 10:30 is too late, while on Thursday nights, when I get home from Boston at 11:30, getting to sleep before midnight is a miracle. For some reason I am always exhausted getting home from practice at 9:00 pm on Wednesdays, so I always get my homework done, and yet on Thursdays, when I have absolutely no time, I leave everything to the last second. I have noticed that my time management skills deteriorate as the week progresses. Most of the time, the day of the week matters more than the time of the day to me. I often find myself just counting down to Friday at 4:00 when I can do nothing. Responsibilities at school, sports and home pile up throughout the week, but on Fridays I can just relax and it is great. The only time that the two clocks are aligned is then, I think. Because I don’t need to be anywhere or really do anything unless I want to, time seems to stand still for a second before it stops and starts on and off again.
“These three chains of events all indeed happen, simultaneously. For in this world, time has three dimensions, like space… there are an infinity of worlds” (16-17).
ReplyDeleteThe idea of an infinity of worlds that are created from every possible decision is comforting to me. I tend to obsess over big and small decision that I’ve made, and whether or not they were the right choice or not, as many others also said. I constantly wonder if I should have said this, chosen to take that class, participated in that activity, talked to this person. I like the idea that there are other worlds where a different version of me made a different decision. If I regret a choice I make, I could comfort myself with the idea that either another version of me made the right decision, or that another version of me made an even worse decision. I would like to reach a point where I do not have regrets, and believe that each decision made me who I am, but at this point in my life I still go to bed every night stressing over what I should have done differently not only that day, but on everyday I can remember.
I thought that this first section was an interesting take on the way that we perceive and move through time. I hadn't really considered the nature of time prior to reading this section, though as a chronic procrastinator I fully understand the difference between biological time and mechanical time. I feel as though that this section had to have been written and rewritten over and over, because these ideas are incredibly difficult to visualize in the traditional sense. I was really amazed by the perpendicular nature of time, that perhaps it could be traversed just as in three dimensional space, that all things that have happened and will happen are currently happening at different points in the loop of time, which we happen to go through in a straight line. I do not think that time is as volatile as we think it is, mostly because the time line we currently live in lacks the chaos that one would expect out of such a world...but then again life always finds a way to make itself strange.
ReplyDeleteI think the concept of alternate realities being branches off of the greater river of time is an interesting concept, however, I would like to know how someone can come up with these ideas. What makes a man think about the nature of all time and space by looking at a clock?
“And just as all things will be repeated in the future, all things now happening happened a million times before.”
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this quote I couldn't help but think of the subject of reincarnation and how even after we die we come back and live the same life over and over and over again for eternity. It is both scary and intriguing to think of such a concept. The life we have now is the one we will always have. I guess this could be either good or bad but the fact they you are stuck doing the same things and suffering through the same things forever is extremely unsettling. This also prompted me to think about deja vu and maybe when we have that feeling it is because we are remembering things from our past life as it has happened many times before. For me this prompted many different theories on time and concepts that relate to it. Personally, I hope this isn't true and that we only have one life. I think this also puts more pressure on making the right choices because you won't have a second chance and your choice will literally live with you forever.
“When a traveler from the future must talk, he does not talk but whimpers. He whispers tortured sounds. He is agonized. For if he makes the slightest alteration in anything, he may destroy the future. At the same time, he is forced to witness events without being part of them”
ReplyDeleteThe way the book covers humans’ relation with the nature of time, allows the reader to really see how much we allow this power to dictate our lives. Personally, I often feel like a slave of time, and can identify myself as a “traveler of the future”. I seem to be always anxious about the future, preparing constantly for it, to the point that I am never in the present, doing things I really want to do. However, the dilemma is that there is never a “future”, as by the time I am finally there, my mind seems to be worrying about what’s next. My fixation with the future has paralyzed me, often causing me to feel like a ghost living in my own body. I feel as if I am passively watching my live go by while I cannot do anything to slow it down. The strange hook is that I know it is crippling me, but I cannot change. For instance, before a small math quiz, I see myself finishing notebooks repeating every single exercise, thinking that if I don’t receive an A in this class, it will affect my college acceptance and therefore, my whole future. In reality though, my happiness is not determined by which college I attend, but by being present in the moment and doing what I like to do. When we are always worrying about the future, it seems like we are not giving ourselves the opportunity to enjoy what life has to offer. Us, as humans, are obsessed with time. We have a clock in every room, a clock in every technology device we own and watches on our wrists that always remind us of the sand of our life dropping in the hourglass. This book made differentiations between the rhythms of our bodies and those of clocks which made me finally able to see them as two separate beings. If we are all victims of the concept of time, we should wonder why we still use it. As Lightman describes, “In time, people have forgotten the reason why higher is better. Nonetheless they continue to live on the mountains… to teach their children to shun other children from low elevations. They tolerate the cold of the mountains…” This makes us really wonder why do we tolerate this diktat? While we have universally agreed that we have become the victims of the concept of time, why don’t we reject it? Why do we allow ourselves to go crazy over minuscule matters?
“In the dead of night these cursed citizens wrestle with their bedsheets, unable to rest, stricken with the knowledge that they cannot change a single action, a single gesture. Their mistakes will be repeated precisely in this life as in the life before.”
ReplyDeleteWe are told at a young age to learn from our past mistakes, but more often than not, we end up making those same exact mistakes, over and over again. Although it is impossible to be perfect, I find myself dwelling on decisions and mistakes I have made. Instead of focusing forward and worrying about the present, I obsess over the unwavering actions of the past. It is important to realize, though, that this tendency to spend time about worrying about previous mistakes takes away from both the present and the future. Worrying about what I have done in the past only heightens my insecurities and makes me more hesitant to take risks and partake in challenging tasks. Recently, I have learned how to use this tendency as a means of motivating myself to see how I can improve my future. I have learned that the past cannot be changed, therefore there is no use in dwelling on it. Alternatively, I must concentrate on the decisions I make in the present, and worry not about what I have done in the past, but rather how I can make decisions that I do not end up regretting.
"In this world there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth."
ReplyDeleteThis quote, especially the part about mechanical time, resonates with me in my daily life. I feel the most pressure of “mechanical time” in my school day and school work. Since kindergarten our entire school day has been planned out to the very second. When we were younger it was 20 minutes for play time, 30 minutes for math, 20 minutes for nap time and so on and so forth. Since then our tasks have changed to english class, statistics and physics, but the regimented schedule is still very much existent. Our day starts at exactly 7:44 in the morning and 2:05 in the afternoon. Was that one extra minute really necessary? Inbetween all 5 blocks we have exactly 4 minutes of travel time. I remember being a freshman stressing out about this. How would I get from the field house to my science room in the back corner of the school without being late? Answer was I couldn’t, I continuously walked in after the bell rung all flustered. As a senior I don’t stress about this anymore, “I’ll get there when I get there.” However, I still find myself looking down at my phone counting the minutes throughout the school day. I keep a strict planner of all my school work with color coded due dates. However, the pressure of time sometimes prevents me from doing everything on time. Since kindergarten every moment of our time has been accounted for. The pressure put on us by “mechanical time” is one that some of us do not even notice as it has become part of our lives.
Colleen McConnell
"Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly." (pg 6)
ReplyDeleteThe pessimist in me (which makes up most of me, honestly) immediately understood this to reference all the bad moments we encounter in our lives. My depression, my bad nights, my arguments with my mom or my boyfriend, my internal conflicts -- they all seem to repeat themselves. I tell myself I'm working towards a solution or a betterment of myself but I somehow enter a cycle of bad moments and short plateaus of good moments.
When it comes to the good stuff, I've never looked at it as if it's a cycle because my good moments don't seem to repeat -- they're always different or different versions of something slightly similar. I think that's why my default is to just focus on the bad stuff, because it's what I'm familiar with and it rarely changes.
This idea of the world repeating itself in a circle strikes me to be true because I think the only thing that changes is my age and my environment. The key pieces to each moment, as time passes, are all the same.
Even looking at it from a wider lens, societies and cultures go in circles as well. A simple example is American fashion -- styles from the 80s and 90s are returning, and, someday, styles from the 00s will return too. A more frightening example is our issues with always ending up back at war despite dealing with the repercussions in the years following one. Or all the mass shootings that have been occurring in the past few years: every time one happens we claim "thoughts and prayers" and ask for changes in the government system -- whether it be stricter screenings for potential gun owners or stricter gun laws -- but we haven't gotten very far because the cycle continues. On a more positive note, social justice issues are repeatedly acknowledged and fought for: women's issues and racial issues were kind of toned down after desegregation and updated voting laws but in recent years we've seen a growth in the social justice community fighting for more personal equality. This is positive in the sense that we're repeating a fight but in a different direction that hopes to tackle the remaining issues but obviously it's unfortunate because this shouldn't have to be happening at all in the first place.
Time being a circle is quite a depressing concept because it makes me question how much control I actually have over my life and my experiences. It also makes me wonder what else we remain unaware of without the encouragement of someone else's philosophical ideas.
Kaby Maheswaran
ReplyDelete“Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself” (6).
This quote, reminded me that we often don’t reflect on our past, and sometimes let history repeat itself. Although repetition in life can be good, repeating our mistakes impedes our future potential. In my opinion, life is a circle with alternating periods of mechanical and body time. I realized that a lot of times I live in a cycle, making the same choices and decisions. I wake up everyday at 6 and get to school at 7:20am. During most school hours my perception of time is mechanical, moving slowly. Sometimes body time affects me during easier classes. After a five minute conversation with a friend, the long block is over. Other times time seems to freeze, only moving when I don’t keep staring at it. Body time and mechanical time keep alternating until 2:05, where body time completely takes over. Body time runs till 6 in the morning, where the entire process happens again. To me time is a combination of body time, mechanical time, and a circle which goes on infinitely.
“ In this world there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time.”
ReplyDeleteThis quote sticks out to me as something that I feel when I am going through periods of intense focus, especially when performing music. I believe that we can truly feel the minute dilation of time when we are completely absorbed in a moment. To me, the mark of true concentration and musical outpouring, I can feel time almost begin to slow down. More than even just a theory on time, I feel like this philosophy is a good way to look at any intellectual activity.
“In the dead of night these cursed citizens wrestle with their bedsheets, unable to rest, stricken with the knowledge that they cannot change a single action, a single gesture. Their mistakes will be repeated precisely in this life as in the life before.”
ReplyDeleteLike Niko said, we are constantly told to acknowledge and move past our mistakes. Although I find myself falling into the same patterns (whether negative or positive), I don't know if I necessarily regret this because I do think things happen for a reason, but maybe I'll look back and see that I made more mistakes than intended. But for me, this quote reminded me of those moments when it's 1am and you can't sleep so you just lay in bed and play over situations in your mind-- what you should have said, and could have said, and probably even what you shouldn't have said. I guess the thing is that you can't change the past, you can only move forward. And even when you make a mistake or hurt someone, they will likely remember that for the rest of their lives, subconsciously or not. Cliche as it is, time is a pretty fickle thing.
“Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.”
ReplyDeleteThis quote resonated with me due to how much truth it speaks. As a person who is interested in history this quote makes so much sense. Time is the variable that allows us to look back and judge whether what we did was right or wrong. What’s interesting is how our sense of right and wrong have changed throughout the times. Events like World War II were justified but as time passes the clarity of the situations becomes true. Time essentially allows us to judge our judgement of the past. It allows us to analyze whether a rash decision can be justified. What I also like about this quote is how by reading it once it simply makes you think. It's clear enough where you understand what is being told but by reading it once, more question follow. Time allows us to look back to our mistakes a judge whether what we did was right or wrong. Overall this quote resonated with me because it made me think and establish a connection with what history means as a whole.
“For they fear that any change they make in the past could have drastic consequences for the future.”
ReplyDeleteI think time is an interesting subject to delve into, because each and every action we take either has negative or positive repercussions in the future, and when we grapple with consequences of things like war and hasty decision-making, we as a society seldom look back and try to find the root of these issues. In saying this, I echo Niko and the others who spoke about the relation between time as it is percieved in different circumstances. Often, in the heat of the moment, we tend to say and do things that we regret later on; this is something that we all have either experienced in the past, or will experience in the future. These problems stem from impulse, which I consider to be one of the most notable obstacles between us and an understanding of time. It truly makes one think, as if decisions taken proudly and satisfactorily today might be lamented by us in the future, how do we trust our own abilities to reason and make choices?
V, you bring up a good point. How CAN we trust our own judgements if the risk of regret is always looming? This is where faith comes in. Anything of substance in life has a substantial risk in pursuing it, but it is for the chance of success anything is accomplished. It is better to be a proud failure than a deferred winner.
Delete"The second makes up its mind as it goes along." (18)
ReplyDeleteI try to live by this philosophy, although at times it gets hard since out culture is so clock-bound. There exists a thing called African time, wherein people raised in Africa and the Caribbean tend to have a looser grip on time, compared our Western stranglehold. If an event is at 6, people start leaving their homes at 6, not always arriving on the dot of 6:00. It would require a massive overhaul on how we as Americans think of time management, but unquestionably reduce stress among the populace. Others may think that such a radical shift in our perception of time would turn us to late, lazy slobs, but consider this: If everyone followed this mindset, wouldn't the one who remained in his old ways be the odd one out? This is a topic I have thought about extensively before, but Lightman was able to articulate the thoughts brewing in my head through the beautiful metaphors of there being a mechanical and body time.
“In time, there are an infinity of worlds”
ReplyDeleteI really liked this quote from Einsteins Dreams because it felt like it truly outlined the purpose of the book. Lightman created an infinite amount of worlds in which thier only difference was the perception of time. He gave the reader an outsiders view to each of these worlds and allowed them to both experience what was happening within that world, and experience what looking down at that world was like. The book itself was in the perspective of an outsider looking in, and I think that is what made this book so intruiging. The author was able to write these different stories and used lagnuage and tone that put the reader in the world, but still gave them a hand to hold when they wanted to return to the world of their own. This book also gave me the idea that maybe there are different ways of percieving time, but how would we know if we were living in the world where time moves slower in the center? How would we know whether or not the time that we are experiencing is extremely slow, or extremely fast, or if its choppy and separated, or if its just seconds and minutes and hours? We would never know, and I think that this quote helps us to understand that there are an infinite number of ways that we could percieve time, even though they would all seem the same unless you were an outsider looking in.
"Some few people in every town, in their dreams, are vaguely aware that all has occurred in the past."
ReplyDeleteThese recurring similarities that are never explained seem to haunt me, creating for only more confusion to my conscious. Coincidences seem to abruptly announce their existence, sometimes soon after or even much later from the first time I experienced something which incites two separate instances to become intertwined. Instead of dreams, these events play out within reality, and the term past in this sense has been construed to mean the current mind’s past. The feeling of realization that unravels once the coincidental connection is made is nothing of a euphoric nature as some may find it, such as meeting someone who is a friend of their friend in a far distant location relative to them. They are absurdly mundane coincidences which hold no relative effect except for a reminder to nothing considerably important. The reason for their occurrence may never be explained, which is frustrating because their correlation seems so obvious, yet, it remains clouded as to why I receive and recognize them.