What is Time?

 

When time is described as a "line or dimension," it sounds so objective. It's measurable and quantifiable. Time described like this is seen in Physics or Math. It's useful in these cases, when we're performing a calculation or measurement. But in everyday life, time is more complicated.

Life can be broken up into intervals of time. It's a series of experiences and moments that form a continuum that make up our identity and who we are. Time is the duration and periods in which we feel moments and perform actions that shape us. We can try to objectify it, but it's personal to each of us.

Like this quote from Shakespeare shows, we live time in different ways during our different phases. It can feel unending or it can feel brief. This is reflected in the way that we write, speak, and communicate. When we tell stories, write essays, or recall narratives, we highlight the emotionally charged high and low points. We fixate on small moments that are significant. While the story holds a timeline or a dimension along which events progress, the story itself is centered around a distorted set of phases, where years of background development are compressed into sentences, and hours of conflict are stretched into chapters. 

Our varying experiences of time are what make it more interesting, meaningful, and significant. It develops our unique perspective on events that have transpired, since a different component sticks out to each of us. Time was defined long before it was "objective" or useful. Long before it had any calculatory applications. It was defined when we needed to share and to tell. As an oral culture and social people, time has been defined as long as we have.