You'd better be having the time of your life! Otherwise.......

January 1st 2019 – Its Time

I hope you are all having, ‘the time of your lives’.

Why? Well, if you are reading this then you are! Alive in time that is. The writer and mathematician David Berlinski tells us that the science of the ‘Big Bang’ (not the TV show) reveals a universe approximately 13.79 billion years old, give or take a million years or two. That’s a lot of time. The singularity was a point in time when time started, and before which there was no time, nor energy, nor space or matter, hard to grasp. Hard to imagine a time without time. So before discussing the importance of time to each of us, our own individual time (a time to create, to rest and to create some more), what are some of the ways in which we think about time? Is time just a socio-cultural construct? Don't we have lots of different calendars across time and place?

Well, maybe its numeric, tic toc, seconds passing by in a linear flash from big bang to now. Some say its a progression, from worse to better, from less modern to more modern, that it’s a process of improving, its a linear sequence that got us, to us, we’re better, special? Others, in times past and in other places, have said no, no, no, time is circular, what goes around comes around, no beginning, no end, just eternal, no cause, just the effect, and that effect just brute fact. Still others have said no, no, time is simply parallel lines so closely packed together that at any point, on any line (except your very first birth line), there will be on one side of you all your younger other selves and, on the opposite side, all your older versions (at least until your death line ends?), possibly providing an opportunity for you to have interesting conversations with your other, younger and older selves, between your then and your next.

Einstein’s theory of ‘special relativity’ and his writing related to the space time continuum tells us that, as bizarre as it might seem on the surface, “events that occur at the same time for one observer, could occur at different times for another”, huh, what? And the British physicist Stephen Hawking goes on to ask “does time always have to flow forward”, or can we go back in time? Which prompts the question, 'would you change anything if you could'? Or is it better to ‘let it be’, and learn from the past?

I mentioned earlier about the importance to each of us regarding our own individual time, as opposed to the more general philosophical thinking about time, that is, the importance of our own four score years and ten or so. So to speak. In trying to make sense of the world around him, Descartes a French fellow, figured out that even if you were to doubt the existence of all else around you, the fact that you doubt, that you think, should give you some assurance that at least you, and maybe only you, can say ‘I at least exist, I live'. In other words, in fact Descartes words, sums it up nicely, “Cogito, ergo sum" - "I think, therefore I am”. But don't others also exist? Well - yes, I think! Its ok, you are not alone in a lonely universe!

The philosopher William lane Craig explains that there are number of properly basic fundamental beliefs, beliefs we mostly don’t even think about, just accept without doubt for most or even all of our lives. Two of these relate to time, your time, your four score years and ten (now averaged at 80.4 for males and 84.5 for females -ABS 2014, refer also to 2nd sentence 2nd para of this article - i.e. getting better and better). The first belief is that, although as Descartes deliberated, all existence is self referential, each of us also believe that others exist too, and that they are not just figments of our imagination, that they are alive, real (and unless you are living as a hermit) that they interact with us in our own lives. We are not at all remotely alone on a lonely planet. The second belief is that there is a past, and that you have a particular past, moreover that there will be a future and that you will have a particular future, a time to come that is both general and personal, that tomorrow will indeed come and the sun will rise and there will be a new day. There will indeed be a 2nd of January 2019 that follows the 1st of January, and you will wake up in the morning to greet it.

So, back to this time then that we might say belongs to us and to no other, your time, its critically important. What will you do with it from this day forward? Each of us can create with our mind, our thoughts, our imagination, the creation of the future that we would like to see come to pass, even if in some (or even in most) circumstances that creation is only incremental. What kind of world do you want to live in with your family and friends, what kind of education, recreation, work or business do you want? What kind of world do you want to create? Out of the hard and soft stuff of our many minds, out of what is immaterial we can, and do, make manifest much of the material world around us.

A New Years toast then!

'Here’s to having the time of our life'

And making the most of it.

Happy New Year -2019

GT

GT & Associates.

Key Note Speaker, Mentor, Author, Advisor to individuals and organisations.