Stretching time

Put simply, one of the facets of relativity is that time varies with speed. Except that the idea time is quicker or slower depending on how fast things move is rather academic, at least at the kind of speeds humans can manage.

With modern digital clocks there isn't even a change as a clock spring winds down, and for a few pounds you can get a timepiece which will be amazingly accurate. There are radio controlled clocks that update themselves from signals sent by atomic clocks and which will even adjust for daylight saving all by themselves.

So given that time is readily available and, for practical purposes, remarkably constant why do we speak about it as though it comes in all shapes and sizes?

"A few short hours" is a typical phrase, as used to emphasise the speed of travel.  Since when did we have short hours, or long days for that matter - I have recollections of a brand of chocolate being stirred "for two long days" in order to give it a superior taste. In Scotland, interruptions are often made by politely asking if you can disturb someone for a "wee second", as if a second wasn't short enough as it is.

It isn't time that is varying in these everyday sayings, it is our perception of time. Holidays seem too short, as do weekends, as does life itself when making an excuse to avoid something: "Life's too short to....", (fill in your own pet hate here).  Something boring, on the other hand, "takes an age", or even "forever".

Why are we so keen to wish away our week so as to get to the fleeting time off at the weekend?  If time were endless then maybe it wouldn't matter if we wasted an hour here, or a week there.  The trouble is time is not endless, it's finite, at least from a human perspective. It lasts the regulation three score years and ten, or until you blindly step into the road and meet the proverbial bus on the way home from work. "Meet" as used here is a messy one-off event and distinctly different from catching the bus, which you can do as often as you like.

Perhaps there is something to be said for enjoying time for what it is: the here and now. Time past has gone; future time may not arrive for some of us in the short term, and for all of us in the long term. Living in the moment and enjoying with gratitude the good parts of whatever we are doing, and wherever we are doing it seems like a good game plan for life. And yes, there are obvious differences in circumstances for each of us, but they are relative too. In the words of that well known saying on life, "Two men looked through prison bars, one saw mud and the other saw stars".   Stars works for me.