In Continuum.

I saw a documentary about a bubble boy once, I think his name is Andy. Due to his lack of white blood cells, Andy is incapable to lead a normal life like children his age. He grew up in a bubble constructed in his room, like a giant maze with everything he'd ever need in life thrown into the bubble by people from the outside world. He couldn't get out of this bubble, breathe the air that we breathe or walk the grass that we walk - he'd die. He's been sheltered all his life, but you cannot blame his parents for being over-protective either. It's sad, but his parents try their very best to give Andy everything that a normal child would have, and one of them was education. Andy read the very same textbooks and taught just the same as all the other children around the country, but one concept was difficult for him to grasp - the rest of the world. Andy couldn't see the rest of the world from where he was, perhaps just the trees outside his window and maybe an occasional bird. It is difficult for him to understand the vastness of the oceans or the tallness of the mountains. That is because he has never seen them with his own eyes, and the pictures in books don't mean anything to him more than just pretty and realistic paintings. The concept of wind, in particular, was difficult for Andy. It was difficult for him to understand how something invisible could actually exist when he couldn't see it with his own eyes. 

It's the same as how our parents tried to teach us the concept of wind, and how it exists despite the fact that we cannot see it. The same can be said about time, but it is an abstract on a completely different level. It is difficult to understand if time is dictated by the movement of the hands on a clock, or the movement of our planet around the sun. If we say that we should base our concept of time on clocks and calendars, then whose calendar do we trust? The muslims have their own calendar, the chinese have our own calendar, and the majority of the world follows the Gregorian calendar - so which is the real time? What is the standard? It is so difficult to grasp the concept of time, when everybody has different concepts of time. It is kind of like trying to travel from one country to another when the signs in the airports don't have a standard to them. You step into that foreign airport and you are bound to be disorientated, because you cannot base your understanding of these new signs on the ones that you have learned. What I am trying to say is, with so many different standards of time throughout human history, it makes the concept of time even more doubtful and questionable. 

Having no clock in a room is kind of like being stuck in a lift with someone you don't fancy a lot. It makes you feel uncomfortable, to know that you do not know when is now, or when is later. Humans like to feel like they are in control, which is also why they feel that they need to save the world and go green. It is this larger than life attitude we have in regards to everything, when we really are not much more different than a beetle in relative to the universe. We are trivial, and we come and go with time so easily. Anyway, we hate to not know the time, which is why if you stand in a busy street for a long enough time, someone is bound to ask you for the time. Every device has a clock now, everything has the ability to tell time. Your cellphone can tell time, your iPod can tell time, even your car's radio has the ability to tell time. We need to know the time while we are driving home, driving to work, working out in the gym, or just being on the street. Not knowing the time makes us feel helpless, it makes us feel disorientated. It's scary to think that time isn't on our side, the concept that there isn't a second hand behind our backs to push us forward a second at a time. But I believe that that is the case, that there really isn't such a thing as time - we just are. 

I have lived for long periods of time without time, which does seem kind of weird after I reread that first part of this sentence. Out in the fields and in the dark, I gave up keeping track of time unless I had to because, well, I am just not the type of person to wear a watch. It's kind of like bracelets or necklaces, it makes me feel bounded and stifled. Anyway, I have tried sitting in a crammed vehicle on a particularly rainy season for twelve hours straight without knowing the time at all. Initially, it was petrifying. You try to test the time with your body clock, but it soon fails on you because you are always over-estimating the true speed of time. I have tried to track with the movement of the stars as well, marking out a point in the sky and then trying to see where it'd be in two hours. But nothing ever really works, it's still too difficult a concept to grasp. After all, what is time anyway? If it isn't the watches or the calendars or the stars? 

I think the concept of time was created by the powers at be. Someone created the concept of time in order to control the human race, pretty much like the concept of government and religion. With all those numbers in our lives, we are then given a window to work, to work, and to work some more. Think about it: if we do not have minutes and hours to keep our days in check, then how do we know when to start or stop work? Or, we won't work. We'd just sit back, relax, and not do a thing since nothing else would matter. Time was created, then, as lines. Kind of like a starting line and a finishing line, and with those lines you know where the race begins and when it ends. With time, you know when to start work and when to end, when to start toiling for your boss and when to have time for yourself. Everything, then, falls into place and we become slaves to the authorities. You know, when to finish the assignments, when to complete this project, when to hand up your homework. Time table, schedules, and deadlines, these are just some of the ways people use to control others, like leashes to dogs. With these lines drawn, we can start to work. If one day lasts forever, what is the hurry? It will never run out, there won't be a need to do anything. And the powers at be don't like that, they don't like it at all. 

I believe that we just are, there isn't a past, a present, or the future. What is "the present" anyway, right this second? Well, that second just passed, and the second after that probably passed as well by the time you hit this point. It's the same as "right now", it is difficult to pin-point that concept, don't you think? We've laid out human history into a timeline for us to have a rough concept of what has come to pass, and yet the concept of dinosaurs existing millions and millions of years ago is still difficult for us to comprehend. To me, we are just stagnant, and things merely happen. Things do not just happen, they just do. We do not exist in the present only because we put ourselves, in relative, to people of the past. We just exist, the way that a buried skeleton remains underground, or the way the mountains line the edges of tectonic plates, the way that the earth remain in a constant motion around the sun. Things exist, and that is the end of the story. We don't exist for this amount of time, and we do not have this amount of time left. To break free from the bonds of time, to embrace that every single moment is a moment that lasts till infinity. I suppose it is a release from bondage that is the same as realizing the concept of free will versus determinism. 

I don't suppose I can confidently say that I understood what I have typed either. The thought is still rather blurry, a little vague in my mind. Besides, it is a little after two in the morning right now, but there is an urge to document this down before it decides to flee my mind. Anyhow, I suppose this idea came upon me after watching an episode of House earlier on, and how Dr. House mentioned something about how believing in the concept of eternity makes life irrelevant. Believing in the concept that time lasts forever, like life after death, doesn't give any meaning to life any longer. I like that idea more, I suppose, than my own idea of how time was created by people to control others. I guess I can believe in an idea but not agree with it. I can be disagreeable as I can be contradictory, and I guess I can be really optimistic for a pessimist - a nod to Paramore here. I like to think that life does not carry on after death, that time does not last forever and ever and ever. It ends when we end, it gives meaning to why we are here in the first place. It is this whole existentialism thing that I am still trying to understand. Do forgive me, sometimes I don't know what I am talking about either.