Time or the measurement of time is dependent upon the cycles of the rock we live upon. The Earth orbits around the sun, the planet spins on its axis created our days and nights and seasons. We change our clocks to twice a year to maximize daylight or so we think. The passing of time is simply a perception.

Years

The Earth year is one orbit around our star. A year feels like a long time when you’re six years old. When you turn 21 the year starts to speed up. When you hit 50 the years start to fly by. Our perception of the year changes as we engage more and more with the reality around us. 525,600 minutes within a year. It is also the parenthetical title of Jonathan Larson’s song entitled Seasons of Love. When we try to account for accomplishments of our year, do you feel like a failure the older you get? Or do you look at the time like an optimist celebrating how many times you mowed the yard, shoveled snow, hugged your children, geocaches found, books read, money earned, etc….

Months

The Julien calendar and the later Gregorian calendar splits our solar year into twelve months that have 28-31 days in them. Each month is a part of a season, each season is approximately three months in length. The Southern Hemisphere and Northern Hemisphere of our planet are seasonal opposites. Plan your vacations accordingly. The shortest month on the calendar is February at 28 days. However, when we live that month as we are engaging in the 3rd month of winter it feels more like 40 days in length. I wonder if our Southern Hemisphere colleagues feel like it is rushed as it is the last month of summer. Meanwhile June and July feel short in comparison to the winter months. Why do 61 days feel like they are over within a snap of the fingers. Summer always seems to be a flitting glance while the winter months are an arduous journey of darkness. Does anyone else feel this perception? Those in the Southern Hemisphere, do you feel the same about December and January?

Weeks

Fifty two weeks in a year; about four weeks a month. There are seven days within that week. Five of those days is spent working to survive in various capitalist pursuits. How many identify their lives around their work? How many feel like the first ten years of work are an arduous journey, and around the 30th year you wonder wear that time went? The weeks just tick by… making progress for someone else… How does one make a week meaningful? Two of those days are considered the weekend. A time of leisure or so we think. How many use the weekend to do work around your domicile? Some use 1/2 a day from the weekend to go to a church, mosque, or synagogue to worship a god. Atheists do whatever atheists do (sleep, read, walk, watch television, go on holiday, whatever.) When I look at this perception of time, I see a lot of wasted time on everything but living or enjoying one’s life. Of course this is the model week around the culture of the United States. I imagine other places have different perceptions of the week or weekend.

Days

The 24 hour day, really isn’t a day if you look at it. Most of us sleep for 7-8 hours of a 24 hour day. We are only consciously aware of 16-17 hours of it. 8-10 hours of that are spent working within an economy to justify and pay for the resources to keep us alive. Is that time well spent? Then we have 6-8 hours to live our life on our terms, but we have chores to do, things to accomplish to keep our homes tidy, meals to cook, play and walk with our companion animals, cuddle with our partners etc. Then we are left with 3-5 hours to live!!! How many just sit and stare blankly at a screen or read a book, because physically we are too tired to do anything constructive? Is this wasted time? Do you notice that 3-5 hours is over in a snap, while the work day drudges on with endless repetition. How much perceived time is wasted? How does one really quantify accomplishments in this context?

Hours

24 hours in a day. 7-8 of these hours we are unconscious. Resting our brains and bodies in a bed, cot, futon, sofa, etc. For the less fortunate the ground outside. 1/3 of the day is not used for anything functional. It is all biological as our body needs to rest. If you were a dog that rest is about 18-20 hours a day… looking at my mastiffs… They have a Ruff Life… Once awake we usually spend another 1/3 of the day working for money to survive. Each hour of labor worth so much money. Many of those jobs barely pay enough an hour to cover rent, mortgage, or food. Only the affluent have zero struggle here. It seems their leisure is our labor especially when we perceive our eight hours in the laborious context. I have spent close to an hour writing and rewriting this… Am I really accomplishing something? Is the thought exercise on the perception of time really meeting an expectation of living? Yes… Maybe… No… A little bit of all three???? Probably…

Minutes

Sixty minutes within each hour of the day. 1,440 minutes in the day. 960 conscious minutes for life. 480 minutes to live post work. What about the commute, the errands, the chores, etc…. How many minutes then? 240? The evening meal… 210… Watch the news 180… The minutes click away very very fast when it is our time, but while we work or sleep the minutes just feel longer or not… 525,600 minutes in that year…. They go by fast, or slow, depending on our day… The perception is altered by the activity we keep. A busy brain processes time faster… Even though the measure of it is consistent. 29,959,200 minutes have passed since my birth. I will add another 525,600 minutes to that total very soon. What have I really accomplished or lived? It seems so inconsequential considering the numbers of minutes, hours, days, months, and years. Our perception of time really alters one’s perception of accomplishment or life lived.

Seconds

Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick… They just fly by. As we age, do we feel these seconds more than when we were younger? Those 60 seconds in each minute sure seem to fly by. 205,200 seconds have passed since I awoke. I managed to make and drink coffee, take care of the dogs, play a couple of word games, use the restroom multiple times, take medication, and walk a bit as I enter week 6 of my recovery from hip replacement surgery. Oh, and reach this spot in the blog. Have I really accomplished anything? Have those seconds just ticked by unwavering while my heart sustains my life… 75 beats per minute… thump, thump, thump, thump…

Despite the passage of time in these very intimidating numbers, the life we live is what we make of it. I have spent about an hour working on this blog. I spent a lot of time reflecting in the peace with music playing. Listening to the sounds of the world around me. Hearing the labor of others from the safety of my couch. The past five weeks of recovery have made me super vigilant to the passage of time. I have accomplished less this summer than I ever thought possible. My body needed to heal, so I can have productive days in my future. Time is really relative to the perception I give it. I feel every one of these units passing quickly even though the universe around me doesn’t function with a perception of time like Iwedo.

It is a humbling experience reflecting a/my life in context within such a vast measurements. I’m in awe of the profundity of it all. I am thankful that I could perceive all of this, and embrace the amount of time I have wasted with no regrets. Each moment is unique and the experiences within each moment are special. I may be sitting here typing while piano music is playing (sharing my thoughts.) Yet, all three of these things are unique to that moment in a life well lived… …so it goes…