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Scratching the Itch of Time: An Existential Feather in the Wind

November 7th, 2015 by Michael Dyet

Hmmm, what is the true nature of time and how can we make peace with it?

For something we cannot put our hands on and cannot actually gain or lose, we invest an inordinate amount of effort trying to tame time and bend it to our will. We have a love-hate relationship with it that seems to intensify the more it eludes us.

I did a bit of research to try and determine when the existential tug of war began. It turns out that the motivation for the calendar was actually quite practical. Farmers needed to know when to plant their crops. So ancient astronomers, in what is now the Middle Eastern country of Iraq, invented the calendar which followed the days that make up the lunar cycle.

Once the itch had been scratched, the desire for smaller and smaller increments of time took root. The earliest method of telling time, in Ancient Egypt, was the sundial. Around 1400 BC, the Egyptians invented a water clock. The hourglass came along around 150 BC. And finally, mechanical clocks arrived in the late 13th Century.

Suffice to say, measured time has been around for quite some time.

Philosophers have long wrestled with the mechanics of time. Several theories exist: 

  • Presentism, as the name suggests, is the belief neither the future nor the past exists.
  • Eternalism is the belief that things that are past and things that are yet to come exist eternally.
  • The Growing Past Theory holds that the past and the present are both real, but the future is not real because it is indeterminate or merely subjective.

Suffice to say, time is a mysterious thing that rather defies defining. Great writers have called upon metaphor to try and capture its elusive quality.

Nathaniel Hawthorne equates it to flight: Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

Charles Dickens dubs it the Great Spinner: She tried to discover what kind of woof Old Time, that greatest and longest established Spinner of all, would weave from the threads he had already spun into a woman. But his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.

Henry David Thoreau envisions it a stream: Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

Carl Sandburg names it…  the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

I do not have the eloquence of these literary giants. But I’ll venture that time is the wind and we are the feather that rides upon it. In periods of torment, it drives us forward when we are not able to move ourselves. In periods of grief, it pauses and holds us aloft until our hearts find equilibrium. In periods of peace, it dances with us as we enter into harmony with it.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.

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