Only the timekeepers care

We usually see Holy Week as a time off from work. We think we now “have time” to do special things we could not otherwise do when at work. But do we have time, or does it have us? And if you say you have time, what do you really have?

During the Middle Ages in Europe, a “moment” referred to a 40th of an hour. This was perplexing, as people during that time did not have a precise measurement for what a “second” was, which made it a shaky ground for timekeeping. There was nothing discrete to keep – it was like netting sunbeam into a jar. This was the Dark Ages, when the general atmosphere was fear, anger, mass persecution, and muddled thinking.

Other cultures had already tried to measure time even before then. Some timekeeping pieces in history tracked the time that passed with water drops, light/shadows passing, and candles that burned at marked levels. My personal favorite is the one in China that used incense to mark passing time with colors and smells! So back then, if you wanted to know how much time had passed, your basis would be water drops, scented smokes, and shadows!

During the Industrial Revolution, one way of looking at and “having” time had to do with how factories divided a day into worker shifts. “Time” for people then took on a very prominent economic personality. This meant that time was segmented into 3-work hour shifts and the concept of a weekend. Time was clearly delineated between work and not-work, and “retirement” was a period that served a person after he or she served time at the grindstone.

But for precise timekeeping which could spell the difference in many things – including those in life and death situations such as weaponry – we have to have a standard in measuring the smallest unit of time, which we call a “second.” A “second” to someone in the United States should be measured the same way as the “second” in Russia. So finally, in 1967, the standard clock was established. This standard clock relies on the oscillations of radiation from energy shifts in the cesium atom. Thus, an official “second” is equal to 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the radiation associated with a particular energy transition in the cesium atom. So when it comes to precise timekeeping, if you have time, you “have” radiation.

But wait, there’s more. In 2015, scientists overdid this timekeeping effort and came up with an “optical lattice clock” that uses strontium atoms that could keep time accurately for 15 billion years. I wonder who would adjust that after 15 billion years.

In other cultures and languages, having time is perceived as “distance” (among Swedish speakers) or “volume” (among Spanish speakers). I have read a novel that described Indians’ sense of time to be “as tensile as bubble gum,” which I think meant that time is a stretchable fabric that goes in all sorts of directions even when the laws of physics point to time always moving forward.

For Filipinos, our sense of time is like our various configurations of adobo – there is no one standard, just some basic ingredients, and some hemming and hewing among the parties involved, depending on the region or the clan who decrees what adobo suits their taste.

Across a human lifetime, the common observation is that adults sense time as passing by so fast, while children sense it as moving so slow. Scientists think there are several explanations for this, and one of them is that children focus on countdowns to an event, while adults, because they have more responsibilities, do not have time for countdowns, given that the density of their adult tasks in relation to the time they have is a lot higher. Adults have enough experience to know that they want more time for the things they want to do. Meanwhile, children are still on their “journey of firsts,” so they sense their time as marked by long waits for those “firsts.” Thus, they sense time as moving so slow.

When it comes to body time, notice how we peg our body clocks on other animals – early birds or night owls. Our biology keeps time in special cells in our brain, which also summons specific hormones to get to work according to the day’s tempo. There is also time that our cells seem to keep – the one that cues them to renew or start dying. This is called the Hayflick limit, and cellular time is about 57 cell divisions. As far as this time is concerned, there seems to be a template for human lifetime and its ending.

When I was 12, I wrote a sonnet about time. I thought even then that time was such a fascinating thing. It was a constant thing that was there before there were even humans to keep track of it, to worry about what to do with it, and to grieve over not having enough of it. Now I am old enough to know, based on my own previous battles and skirmishes with time, that it really does not care. Whether it is kept by water drops, incense, candle marks, or the silent rhythmic fire of cesium or strontium atoms, time will move, as it always has.

Only the timekeepers care. May we all keep and fill each other’s time well during this long break. – Rappler.com