The Passage of Time
SCIENCE AND TIME
There’s hardly a more perplexing topic than time. I had a graduate seminar called “Concepts of Time” almost 30 years ago and I still have no idea what time is (even though I know the difference between the A and B series) or whether time is even real. (A view shared by a few physicists.) St. Augustine famously said: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” Later, in Chapter XII of his Confessions, he responded to the question “What was God doing before He made heaven and earth?” with the answer, “He was preparing hell … for those who pry into mysteries.” He apparently meant this facetiously. To make matters worse modern physics uses mathematical models to combine space and time into a single continuum called spacetime.
PHILOSOPHY AND TIME
But I’m less concerned with these abstract questions, and lack the training necessary to say something intelligent about them anyway. Instead I’m struck by the phenomenology of the consciousness of time’s passing, a fancy philosophical way of talking about the conscious experience of the movement of time, and also the experience of aging in general. Consider how some popular music, for example, has captured the passage of time. (I urge all readers to view the music videos that accompany these songs.)
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC AND TIME
The American singer-songwriter Five for Fighting (Vladimir John Ondrasik III) captures this by focusing on certain ages and typical experiences of them in his song “100 years.” Here the focus is on the fleetingness of time:
I’m 15 for a moment
Caught in between 10 and 20
And I’m just dreaming
Counting the ways to where you are
I’m 22 for a moment
And she feels better than ever
And we’re on fire
Making our way back from Mars
I’m 33 for a moment
Still the man, but you see I’m a “they”
A kid on the way, babe.
A family on my mind
I’m 45 for a moment
The sea is high
And I’m heading into a crisis
Chasing the years of my life
Half time goes by
Suddenly you’re wise
Another blink of an eye
67 is gone
The sun is getting high
We’re moving on…
I’m 99 for a moment
And time for just another moment
And I’m just dreaming
Counting the ways to where you are
The American singer-songwriter Anna Nalick wrote these lines about the passage of time in her song “Breathe (2 AM).” Here the focus is on our inability to stop the flow of time:
But you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable,
And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button now …
And of course there is that old staple “Sunrise, Sunset,” from the classic play “Fiddler on the Roof.” Here we have parents reflecting on how fast their children have grown and, at the same time, how fast they must have aged too. Here the attitude toward the passage of time is at once wistful and melancholy:
Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don’t remember growing older
When did they?
When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn’t it yesterday
When they were small? …
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
No doubt there are countless other songs that explore similar themes, but this sampling suggests there is something universal about this experience of time’s passage that evokes strong emotions. It is no wonder that religions have tapped into this by marking life’s salient moments like birth, marriage, and death.
LONGFELLOW OF THE PASSAGE OF TIME
The passage of time steals our youth, our vitality, and any permanence we hope for. On the other hand, we are not impotent against the forces forces of time, and we can help others to flourish in the battle with time. Much of world literature deals with such themes but consider just one poet for the moment. Longfellow touched on most of these themes regarding time in his in his 1838 poem “A Psalm of Life,”
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave…
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing,shall take heart again…
As an old man Longfellow maintained that we can learn much as we pass through life, and that maturity allows for insights unachievable in youth. He said as much to the fiftieth anniversary class of 1825 at Bowdoin College. Exhorting his fellows to continue to work and dream even as they advanced in age he wrote:
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
STILL DEATH IS BAD
Still as I have argued in my recent book on the meaning of life, the wisdom that may come with age makes death more, not less, tragic. The wisdom which took so much time and effort to achieve … essentially vanishes with our passing, since it is mostly ineffable and incapable of being transmitted to the young. They have to learn it on their own … as they age.
So for now, until we have halted our aging and eliminated death, the passage of time enslaves us. It is true that we can’t jump the tracks because we are like cars on a cable, and life is like an hourglass glued to a table.
And this is a reason to lament our fate … and battle to defeat it.
