Which is this Summer, which is almost over, and lately I’ve thought about the passage of time. 50, what I number! I’ll hit it next Spring, not quite there yet. This morning Stevie Wonder’s great Reggae Woman came on the radio as I was driving TS1 to work and I realized that came out 36 years ago. Born to Run turned 35 last week.
35, 36 years, those are long chunks of time. But what does it mean? Or rather, is a long passage of time something our puny human minds can truly comprehend? I can put two similar colors next to each other and see the difference. I can listen to different bunches of white guys doing the same song, say KISS or Bruce and hear the difference. Those links go to versions of The Crystal’s Then She Kissed Me, by the way, since I love rock and roll covers of pop tunes.
Time is (qualitatively) different and to answer my own question I don’t think we’re set up to grok it. The reason may lie in the very deep cosmological theories, some of which appear to say that time is actually an illusion or at least a second order phenomena emerging from the way our limited senses interact with reality. On the other hand the problem might be simpler, that unlike most everything else we experience we cannot directly see, hear, touch, smell or feel time. The real answer would be interesting to me but isn’t needed here.
Think back to some experience you had ten years ago. Summer of 2000, before the reality of the dotcom implosion hit. I went to Italy with my Dad for two weeks, we had a terrific time and I still enjoy recalling visits to Agrigento and Pompeii.
Now think about something that happened to you 30 years ago, Summer 1980. I was between freshman and sophomore years of college, home in New Jersey before transferring to USC, working for Harry M. Stevens at Giants Stadium a few nights a week and for Murjani weekdays.
For me both these experiences are a long time ago but honestly I cannot qualitatively separate them. Intellectually I know 20 years passed between them and I can think of the things that happened during that span but unlike the Springsteen and Kiss versions of the song I cannot really feel any difference along the time axis.
50 years is a nice round number and I hope to experience many more years, no doubt, but I don’t expect this to change even if I make it to 100.
Does time feel the same to you?
BillSaysThis 