“have no fear for atomic energy, because none of them can stop the time”
Those are the soothing words from Bob Marley’s redemption song.
Revolutionary music! YES! My balled-up fist sailed into the sky. That revolution did spin me into a quest for scientific knowledge.
Can time be stopped?
Do you know how your watch works?
That digital display on your device. The one blinking as your alarm tells you it’s time to get up and start chasing those dreams.
The one that’s strapped to your wrist that shifts the sticks that point to numbers in a circle, telling you it’s time to eat.
These devices measure time. They don’t make it.
But what is the world without time?
Nothing but a sequence of related events, it seems.
The problem with time
Most of us have a rigid definition of time
As we age, we start to live with regret of the past and anxiety of the future.
We have become dependent on “fixed time” and its measurement with a clock.
We rely on it to synchronize. We use it to measure productivity.
But attachment to this time stops us from living in the present and adopting a patient perspective on the life experiences we want.
But we go through it. Minute by Minute. Day by Day, complaining about getting older as our youth disappears in an illusive past that only our memory anchors onto.
Some say “time is passing fast”
Others say “i’m just feeling stuck”
Stuck in an era where..
…everybody wants it now.
NOW. NOW. NOW.
OK if you get it now. Then what?
What happens in the future?
Life turns into rusty gears of “I used to”, “Wish I will”, and “I should” grinding in an oil-less clock.
No one has the time to discuss the possibility of a world without time – Oh no! That’s hippie talk.
“Give me the definite. I only want the concrete.”
For a lack of better words, we’ve pimped time for our own survival.
Turned it into an object. A thing.
In reality…
it is not something we have control over.
The world without time is just a dynamic world of relationships.
Take away the common denominator and the world is just movement in space in relationship to other things moving (and transforming) in space
You are transforming and so is everything around you.
The best you can do is to “be in the moment” and be patient.
You can exist in a space without time.
Time is just a measurement of dynamics and relationships between events.
Your World Without Time
Start thinking of time as relationships and dynamics.
It’s possible to remove time from the equation if you just focus on dynamics between things.
When you start reframing your relationship with time, you will accept and appreciate the present for what it is.
Something that is constantly changing.
You will be more patient. You will accept your role as a transformation agent that changes with reality
And not a fixed object that reality is acting on.
You’ll embrace yourself as the change-maker that you are destined to be.
Here are five ways to re-think a world without time.
1.Dynamics as relationships
Everything is about relationships.
When I’m making a beat, it’s not about throwing different sounds together to make a song.
Every instrument has to complement the other to make the whole. This is what creates the gestalt effect.
What is the world without time?
Do we need an absolute time that is the standard that everything else varies with or a relative time that changes with speed and position.
The world is made up of events and not things. Just like a song, it is the dynamic relationship between the different elements of life that make up time.
We can describe our world as events changing in relation to other events.
The car moving in relation to the constant road
The earth revolves in relation to the sun.
The world is filled with these dynamics and that’s all there is to it.
A world without time is simply the dynamics and relationships between things (or events).
2. You are a human (transforming)
Everything is transforming.
One of my favorite books is the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire.
My main takeaway is that we are all historical beings, with a critical role of transforming our collective reality.
You are not a fixed object that a fixed reality is acting on. On the contrary, we are subjects of transformation that are aware of our roles to transform and shape the environment we are in as it shapes up.
What does this have to do with time? Everything.
Because in a world without time, things don’t stop. They just keep doing what they do – transform.
You see, you are changing. The device you are using to read this letter is going through change. The energy source that charged your phone transformed from something – burnt fuel.
That burnt fuel transformed from a tree from thousands of years ago or the sun that we constantly revolve around.
Everything is changing. Taking up unique configurations.
A rigid impasse that our construct of time has put on us is that the world is this fixed reality that we are all supposed to conform to.
It separates us from our roles as active subjects of transformation.
You can always change because you are change – in itself.
Whether you like it or not. You are going to change, you get to decide how you want to change in this dynamic world.
You are an active participant of a constant transformation that’s happening within and outside of you.
3. Time-keeping is just repeatability
Everything can be a clock.
Kanye West asked on his track:
“What’s your addiction?
Is it money?
Is it girls?
Is it weed?
I‘ve been afflicted
with not one,
not two,
but all three.“
Oh, yeah add one more for me – wristwatches.
In my early 20s, I was obsessed with classic timepieces – Tag Heuers, Breitlings, Rolexes.
I went from tick tock to perpetual movement.
Little did I know that the clock was just doing what everything in the world was doing – moving, oscillating, vibrating.
Here’s a brief summary of how a wrist watch works.
Your wrist watch is made up of indicators (what you see – minute and second hands). Behind the scene, some gears are moving in relation to one another. This movement is repeated in a consistent pattern by some gates and something that’s powered to vibrate constantly.
In a quartz wristwatch that thing that vibrates is a Quartz crystal.
Quartz crystals resonate at a frequency of 32768Hz.
Anything can be used to oscillate to bring about this repeatability. But this specific frequency was chosen for two reasons.
- It’s a power of 2 and
- That frequency is out of the range detectable by the human ear.
Got that.
Your watch is singing but doesn’t want you to hear it. It’s moving but wants to give the illusion of being quiet-in-place.
I’m on to you, you shiny Rolex.
Anything that can oscillate consistently can be a clock.
A child on a swing, powered consistently, can be a clock.
A ripple in the lake caused by a persistent drops of water – clock.
There was a time when only the rich had the clock.
It was used as a timekeeper when the industrial revolution swept across England in the 1700s.
“On the factory floor, time became a tool for the exploitation of workers.”
~ New York Times, You Call This ‘Flexible Work’?
The person who has the clock wields the control. But what about when everyone has a clock? Is the clock controlling us?
Anything that can oscillate in a repeatable and sustainable way can be used as a clock.
Keeping time is all about predictable repetition. In a world without time, everything observable can be used to measure time in relation to another.
4. Stop seeing things only in this rigid realm
Everything is connected.
I started meditating actively in 2014. I had moved too quickly and snapped my achilles a few months before picking up the practice.
While in a cast and entering a new environment, my mind was unsettled. Movements from sports brought me clarity and focus.
I couldn’t do that anymore.
Meditation was a practice that helped.
It has adjusted my relationships with time. Sometimes, deep in meditation, time disappears.
What does a world without time feel like?
Try this out.
Close your eyes, then…(well read the next eight lines, then close your eyes)
Imagine you are the only one, seated in a pitch black room.
You can’t smell anything.
You can’t see anything.
You can’t taste anything.
There are no sounds. No draft of the wind. You can’t feel the chair you’re seated in nor the air going in and out of your nostrils.
Strip yourself of the concepts you have of yourself – your roles, achievements, persona.
Use your imagination and try it out for sixty seconds.
How did it go? What was your experience?
What was left?
Time can disappear when you go inside and disconnect from the persistent movement around you.
When time disappears, your concept of your physical self dissolves. You get a glimpse of everything being connected.
Appreciate the order you have formed in your mind.
Realize that everything is connected. From you to the air to whatever device you are using to read this letter.
5. Slow it down. Be present
It’s all your own time.
On a cold snowy night, I found myself in the control room of an ethanol plant, somewhere in Midwest America.
I had begun zoning out as I looked at optimization graphs for hours.
My mind swayed to the screen that showed the parking lot outside, filled with snow and a few vehicles. I noticed the color of the snow change, probably from the setting sun.
“Wow, look at that. Amazing” I said.
“What?” My colleague responded.
“The color of the snow is changing.” I responded. I had never seen anything like it before.
He looked again and said: “Interesting. Simple minds get fascinated by simple things.”
I chuckled. I didn’t know whether it was a diss or compliment.
I kept it moving.
Do you ever slow it down to pay attention to the simple things?
Is your life one endless loop from one deadline to the other?
Experiences from childhood can last a lifetime but as you get older, the days, weeks, and years, just zoom right past you.
Children look at the world with curious eyes. Every moment of observation can lead to a new insight.
As we get older, this child-like ability to look at the world as a sequence of interesting events is stripped away.
Slowly but surely, we develop routines to be more efficient.
We take the same path to the office.
We walk down the same flight of stairs.
We have the same conversations.
The only way to start experiencing the world for what it is, is when we slow things down and become more observant.
When we observe the world for the continuous transformation that is happening, we will experience time for what it is or isn’t – a set of related events constantly shifting.
And you become a mindful observer.
Life can come at you fast.
Slow it all down by focusing on the present and observing the mundane.
Final Thought
What does a world without rigid time look like?
Look no further, it is the way the world is supposed to be. It just is – the present, constantly transforming.
Time can be measured as a relationship between things.
Everything that you observe can be a clock if it’s repeatable.
To stop time from zooming past, slow it down. Be present and allow your curiosity to observe the mundane.
Don’t be controlled solely by the man-made clock. You are an agent of this collective transformation.
Make time work for you not against you.
Be in the present and transform.
