so-called time

If I could have a moment of your time, I’d like to share a story with you.

When I was in the second grade, I had a very simple, yet very profound realization.

I realized that one day I wouldn’t be in the second grade anymore. Years would pass and I would be swept up with them, carried away toward the next moment.

I couldn’t tell if time was my enemy or my friend, and I still can’t. Time is moving forward, that’s the end of it.

Birthdays and New Year’s ring in a haunting reminder that I’m growing up, whether I want to or not.

The second grade was safe. It was easier back then, simpler.

We learned how to write in cursive, how to multiply, and how to divide. We learned about fractions and how to simplify those fractions. The second grade introduced me to the art of simplification.

To simplify meant to understand, and I’ve been trying to simplify everything in my life ever since.

Simplify my life so that I can navigate the world.

Simplify the world so that I can find a place in it.

Simplify so I can understand.

Understand so I can explain.

Now, life is pretty simple already. So simple that it’s somehow complicated.

It doesn’t seem this way at first glance though. It looks overwhelming, treacherous, deep, and complex.

But when I took all of that complexity and broke it down, I was left with only one question.

One impossible question.

What now?

Or even more introspectively, 'What is now?'

Time, the last thing left to simplify, simply demanded complexity.

Is time a human construct?

Time, which holds everything inside of it, including you and I, remains a mystery.

Does time exist at all?

Even the world’s greatest physicists don’t have a real answer to that, and in one sense, it’s a ridiculous question to even ask.

How can someone say time doesn’t exist?

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The past, the present, and the future.

First of all, we have such a profound experience of it, and second of all, we can’t stop talking about it.

The real question is, what do we mean by it?

When physicists like Einstein question the existence of time, they aren’t doubting our aging process or daily experience. They are questioning something deeper than the man-made measurements that we are most familiar with.

Clocks and calendars.

They’re questioning time’s seemingly constant flow forward.

They’re questioning the fundamental nature of time itself.

We measure time in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. We go through the day acting as though the past is over and the future has not yet happened.

But what if it isn’t, and what if it has?

We already know that time is relative, meaning that it changes depending on factors like speed and gravity, but what does that mean in the grand scheme of things?

In the grand scheme of time?

Einstein proposed that spacetime was something singular. You can’t have space without time and so forth. Here, the past and the future are simply spatial dimensions, like north and south.

Time is just another dimension, like space. ‘Now’ is to time, as ‘here’ is to space.

Here, the past and future exist simultaneously. If you’re playing that game, you’re essentially saying that time, as an independent thing, doesn’t exist.

It all exists, all at once.

Again, that challenges our everyday perceptions of the world, and as much as I want to listen to the scientific arguments of time being an illusion, my second-grade self would beg to differ.

How could it be an illusion when I've lived it?

I was right about the second-grade thing, after all. How could it all be an illusion if I’m not 10 anymore? If I’m not even 17 anymore, or 18, or 19, or 20?

And that’s when it hit me. I know I’m not 10 anymore, but my memory doesn’t. I can still remember it all as if I am. I remember being in second grade.

Like my 10-year-old self is just in the next room. Like it was just yesterday.

If the past, present, and future exist all at once, then so do I.

I exist all at once.

I’m all of the years I’ll ever live, all at the same time.

How could it be an illusion? How could it not be an illusion?

There are no ages, there are no numbers, there is only here & now.

There is only time and what you decide to do with it. And so, I ask myself again, what now?

Is time my enemy or my friend?

I think it's both & neither.

Time is my enemy, my competition, and the only thing that I’m afraid of.

Time is my friend, my collaborator, and the only thing that I can count on (pun intended).

Time heals and steals. It’s a love-hate relationship.

The reason why people use ‘so-called’ in a sentence is to indicate that they think a word or expression used to describe something, is in fact, wrong.

I think time is a small word being used to describe a big mystery, but still, a mystery I hope we can solve.

Although, the point I have been trying to make this entire time, is that we already have.

All of the mysteries have already been solved. All of the questions have already been answered.

Even in the second grade, I had all the answers, deep down I always have and I always will.

It was simply a matter of time until I found them.

Until they found me.

There is so much more that needs to be discovered, of ourselves, and the universe.

It’s simply a matter of time.

Time itself doesn’t want you to lose, but it doesn’t care if you win.

It’s not with you or against you. It just is.

I am no longer racing against the clock, trying to outrun it, or fearing its passage. I am moving with it, as a part of it.

Side by side. Hand in hand.

Forever grateful for the mystery.

Which brings my story to an end, for now.

It’s what you do with this so-called time that matters.

What will you do with yours?

— Ciara