It's All Relative

I find time such a mystifying concept. How can a construction as consistent as time be so relative? Some eight hours can transpire as it had never occurred when one is sleeping, and yet, half that time can seem like days when stuck in front of a textbook with the intent to study for a final. Not only is time relative, but the value I ascribe to time alters, based upon the circumstance. A two minute run to make class can mean more to me than the thirty minutes I spent waiting in the dentist's office last week. As Albert Einstein put it, "put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity".

In lieu of this notion, I have recently had this breaking away from everything and I think I am beginning to understand a way of thinking one of my good friends has lived by since I knew him. I’ve always played by the rules, always seen each minute as a form of currency that can only count against you unless you’re engaged in something that can be defined by employers, teachers, or administrators as worthwhile. But the thing about it is this: I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering why I see only numbers instead of moments, ideas, faces, gestures, places. Of course we all want to be a part of the movers and shakers of this world and we can only do so if we are active participants, which does require some form of responsibility and with that, obligation, but perhaps it is, as my friend says, those moments in which we are doing absolutely nothing, left with our thoughts spurring through our mind and bouncing between the corners of our consciousness, that we are reminded that to live, just to live, is enough.

@ 2009 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photo vi.sualize.us}