Time

Time is an interesting thing. We measure it in numerous and different ways.

To a child waiting to spring from their seat and go out for a recess, a minute feels like an hour.
To a child having the time of their life at a sleepover, an hour feels like a minute.
To a college freshman frantically trying to finish their exam, a minute slips through their fingers like water.
To a college freshman anxiously awaiting the arrival of their family, a minute feels like ages.
To an adult who is mourning a loved one, a year feels like the blink of an eye and yet also the length of a decade.

We all measure time in different ways and our concept of time changes depending on what we are doing, working towards or hoping for. How can time be something so concretely fluid?

Is there a way to stop time and soak up the love we feel? Or is there a way to speed up time in moments of immense heartbreak and loneliness?

Today, my students and I were reading a Time For Kids and exploring the greatest inventions of 2016. We were looking at and discussing the Tiangong 2 space station and a student raised their hand high into the sky. You know, the kind of hand raise that looks like they are going to take off from their seat? I was sure his comment would not be at all connected to our discussion, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

"Ms. Green! Do you think they'll invent a time machine? Because I know how to travel through time!"

While this comment made me giggle a little bit (inside) ... it got me thinking about what I would do with a time machine. With a machine that would allow us to literally bend the constraints of time... When would I go? Who would I go see? And how would my arrival change our future?

I'm sure we all can name a definitive moment in our history that we would love to "replay" or "redo" or "remove" from our history ... but at what cost? Would it be worth it to see a loved one again, even if it might cause greater heartache?

I don't have the answers ... I can't even share my opinion. But the concept of time is definitely an interesting one.

When would you go? Who would you see? 

Time

31,536,000 seconds.

525,600 minutes.

8,760 hours.

365 days.

52 weeks.

8,409,600 breathes. 

10,512,000 blinks.

2,920 hours of sleep.

2,080 hours of work.

1,996 pounds of food eaten.

5,840,000 words spoken.

Phew, I am sure that most of you are thinking that this is a lot of numbers and they seem quite randomly strung together. There is a purpose to it, I promise.

All of the numbers listed above from 52 at the smallest to over 31 million at the largest are ways to measure a year. You can measure a year in many different ways - some that you may not have thought to use as a measurement tool.

There is a well known saying that says, "Life is Not Measured by the Number of Breathes We Take, But By the Moments that take Our Breathes Away."  Well ... that may be true, but apparently we can measure our life by the number of breathes we take. Over 8 million to be exact.

So, why am I sharing this with you? Well ... I have found that time is a really hard concept to understand (and no, I am not referring to teaching students how to find elapsed time - that is a blog post in and of itself). I keep trying to figure out how the measure of time can remain constant, yet feel so erratic.

When you are bored, an hour of time drags so slowly that it may as well go backwards.
When you are having fun, an hour of time flies at the speed of light.
When you are watching a loved one suffer, every second is a painfully long tick on the clock.
When you are missing someone desperately, the days travel at two speeds - simultaneously at a snail's crawl and at a cheetah's run.
When you find that you have massive amounts of stuff to do, the year moves faster than is possible while you watch your to-do list seemingly grow.
When you want to get married, then time appears to melt off the clock.
When you want to have a baby, the time you spend trying to get pregnant feels like eons longer than it actually is.

What is up with that? How can time drag by second by second, and then fly by day by day as you anxiously wish for more time. Is there ever enough time?

I obviously don't have the answers here, folks. But it is food for thought, I guess. How do we desperately hold onto the time that we have and truly make the most of it while honoring those that we miss?

We live. We breathe. We remember. We smile. We laugh. We hope.