Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Time

Sketch from Armstrong in Winter a couple of years ago. Or was it three?
"A thousand ages in Thy sight are like an evening gone; short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun. Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away; they fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day."
These two verses from "O God our help in ages past" show how difficult a concept time is. For one thing, it is not one of the five senses, so the brain has to do some pretty complicated things to keep track of it, and even then it gets muddled sometimes as to how much time things actually take. We are aware of such sayings as "Time is Money" but have you ever thought about how much time you save by driving faster? For example for a 25Km commute at 100Km/hr it takes 15 minutes. At the speed limit (90Km/hr) it takes just under 17 minutes. So do you have something important to do in those extra one and three quarter minutes? If one goes fast on the highway a long way, then slower through town on the streets, one thinks the longer route takes longer, even though both journeys take the same time. On holiday time seems slower than at home. I remember summer holidays for two weeks at the seaside, the first week went slow, the second week went too fast! Different philosophers have varying concepts of time. Some think that time is unreal, because events occur in past, present, and future. But that's yesterday's post....In the meantime, I will just keep on killing time until my time is done....and you may enjoy this wonderful video relevant to this post about "A Day in your Life".

2 comments:

Desiree said...

I will have to check out the video another time...no time now :) Another enjoyable post, thank you and I really love your snowy sketch! I don't want your head to swell, but you really are very talented. I hope you'll share all of your artworks with us over time. Right now, it's time I start thinking about getting to bed.

Alan Burnett said...

An old Irish philosophy professor one described to me (over a pint or two I must add) how he once met an old farmer in County Antrim who on being told the post office wouldn't open for another hours said, "Sure, it won't take me long to wait an hour". This, according to my boozy mate Bill, was a perfect description of Wittgenstein's Theory of Time.