Time is an interesting idea. We think of time as linear, but if you read anything from physicists, they talk about how time is not (Watchmen explores this idea better than I can ever explain it with the way Dr.Manhattan perceives time). It is nearly impossible for most people to understand relativity and that is why space travel (and a movie like Interstellar confuse so many folks).
If you want to truly get an idea of how time is just a construct created by us to define “when” something happened, talk to a little kid. Payton refers to all time in the past as “last night” and the future is always “when I get bigger.” It can be hard to understand a story at times.
For example, she was telling Lindsey about how I yelled at her when we were eating pizza last night. At first I did not know what she was talking about, we did not have pizza last night. Then it hit me, she meant last week when we were eating pizza and she kept asking Alexa to play “Into the Unknown.” After a few times in a row, I played something else. She had a temper tantrum and started crying. I yelled at her and told her that she gets a turn, then Logan gets a turn at picking a song.
You could be quick to dismiss this as just a child not having the vocabulary to describe time accurately, but I wonder if that is actually the case. Do children just perceive time as past/present/future. They do not need the distinctions we have because it is not important. She got yelled at in the past, it does not matter exactly when it happened, it was then.
Time is something we just understand. At some point we were told that there are hours, days, weeks, months, years…and then we eventually learned how that time is broken up, but it is arbitrary. We could easily create new words and divide time into random units. Try to explain time to a child (actually, take a second and try to explain time to yourself, what is time? Why is there time? Yeah, good luck with that one).
Anyways, just something to ponder on this wonderful Christmas Eve!
