‘Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where’s it going to end?’
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead – Tom Stoppard
Time will end. Time will end with the human race because it is a human construct. It shouldn’t be as binding as we allow it to be, considering that fact. We live our lives to it. We’ve organised history according to all the different blocks of time we’ve come up with. Days are not just light and dark, but morning; lunchtime; 4pm; watershed; 11pm, when you are required to be quiet in consideration of your neighbours. Time is pressure. Time is exhausting. What would day–to–day life be like without dates and hours?
‘The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that we no longer even notice it, when it so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea; it has us.’
Punished By Rewards - Alfie Kohn
Humans invent things which are meant as aids or conveniences, but they take so well they become unimaginable to be without. We over-accepted Hoovers and Pritt Stick so that these brand names are understood to mean any vacuum-cleaner and glue stick. I don’t even know the proper name for a Biro.
How is life understood without time? What was it like before?
‘The question What was there before creation? is meaningless. Time is a property of creation, therefore before creation there was no before creation.’
I, Lucifer – Glen Duncan
I am unable to think in a way that doesn’t include time. It leads me to wonder what else I take for granted and simply assume to be true and the way of things. I imagine time to be linear, but is it? Is it as simple and steady as we think? Hinduism’s story of creation suggests that time loops. Brahma creates the world, Vishnu takes care of that creation until the time comes for Shiva to destroy it, then it all starts again. Graham Swift talks about the human race’s ability to progress. We achieve new things and grow in some ways, but we regress in others. Maybe we can’t move on. Maybe we just stay where we are.
‘It goes in two directions at once. It goes backwards as it goes forwards.’
Waterland – Graham Swift
If Heaven is real, it is accepted that it is for eternity. Eternity is all time. All time can’t just be from now on, but all the time preceding that moment, therefore time must be more fluid and complex than we think it is.
‘There is no other day. All days are present now.’
The Great Divorce – C.S. Lewis
We talk about time going slowly or the hours going faster. That seems illogical, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe investing in the future is illogical. Thinking about today’s happiness often leads to hedonistic and irresponsible behaviour, but being happy on this day is equally as important as being happy on any other day. That is something to remember whatever you think about time.
‘The Queen said “The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam today.”
“It must come sometimes to ‘jam today’.” Alice objected.
“No it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day; today isn’t any other day, you know.”’
Alice Through The Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll


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