Familiarity, it is said, breeds contempt. That may be because familiarity does not necessarily mean full understanding or comprehension. This is certainly true about time. Time is one entity that everyone would aver he or she knows and knows well! Yet, the simple and preliminary question, "What is time?' would leave one baffled.
As one attempts to come to grips with time, one encounters a number of incongruities. Time is one of the three fundamental entities that are measured. Yet, unlike the other two, viz. length and mass, time is not tangible. It cannot be seen or handled. It has no size or shape or colour. It has no volume, nor mass. Still man not only measures it, but has also gone to great lengths to improve accuracy as well as the sensitivity of that measurement. Time cannot be defined in absolute terms. It is an expression given to the psycho-logical impression one has of intervals between two events, of differing magnitudes of those intervals. Time thus is only a measure of those magnitudes.
Time assumes a mystic, surreal character when one realises that it has no beginning nor end. It is eternal. It flows only in one direction, from the past to the future, though mathematics tells us that there is no reason why it cannot flow in the reverse direction.
As if these absurdities were not enough, Albert Einstein queered the pitch by promulgating that time is the fourth dimension in which the universe exists, that it is inseparable from space. Further, there is no absolute time but that it is dependent on the frame of reference of the observer. This paradigm shift in the already feeble comprehension of time has made it appear almost ethereal.
Perhaps Einstein or Stephen Hawking, who dared to write A Brief History of Time, can claim to have understood time in its entirety. Mere mortals like us can only make a brave attempt to do so. This is one such attempt. Those who jump in where angels fear to tread may be fools. Without venturing to take such leaps, however, one cannot even be-gin to become wiser.
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