If I Could Save Time in a Bottle

01.31.2011

One month of this new year…gone. Amazing, isn’t it? I sometimes wish that I could experience the world without time. I remember reading that Einstein said that time is relative. Have you ever found yourself feeling like time was dragging and other times, you look at the clock, it’s a certain time and in what seems like a blink of an eye, 5 hours have gone by? Einstein would use that as an example to explain how there really is no such thing as “time.” And I agree. Humans made it up. Once upon a time, the US was all over the place with the clock. Each state tracked time differently but it wasn’t until the transcontinental railroad was built that government unified time.

I think it’d be quite freeing to live in a world without time. Then it wouldn’t be so scary to see its passage on children. I remember adults telling me how fast I was growing up and I couldn’t stand it. I figured they had nothing else to say to me other than lamenting their own lost youth. Now I’m on the flip side of that coin and, dammit, if that’s not how I feel. It’s not like I necessarily wish to be young again. I just wish I had that time. Imagine if we didn’t live in such a linear society... There’d be no “Wow, where did the last 30 years go by?” It would just be. I think we’d be more inclined to live each day in the moment. Perhaps that is a reason people have kids. Small children have no concept of time and each day is filled with wonder. We adults lose those qualities somewhere along the way and our children remind us of the beauty of the moment. And of course, it is those moments that we capture in our minds that instantly become beloved memories, just like yesterday, just like today and just like tomorrow will be...