The Existence of Time: A Human Concept and Our Perception

Time is a fascinating yet elusive concept that we often take for granted. We tend to believe that something does not exist if we cannot sense it with our sensory organs. However, when we examine the nature of time, we are confronted with the question: If we cannot sense it directly, how do we know that time exists?

The Human Conception of Time

Time, as we understand it, is a human invention that has been around for approximately 5,000 years. Its units and usage were designed by humans to help us organize and understand the world around us. Time is an essential part of our way of gathering and processing information, but is it an objective entity that exists independently of human perception?

It is worth noting that while we cannot directly sense time with our sensory organs, we can detect and measure its effects on the world around us. For instance, we cannot see the back of our own head or our butt, nor have we ever seen an atom, electron, proton, neutron, or quark. Similarly, on a dark, moonless night in a place with no air or light pollution, we can only see up to 9,110 stars. Despite our inability to see time directly, we can certainly feel its presence and measure its effects.

The Inevitable Aspects of Time

Time is one of the attributes of any existential entity that comes to our attention. All things that exist under human observation, whether they have colors, shapes, or other recognizable features, are inevitably marked by a time factor. For example, a fully grown apple will eventually outlive its current existence and be physically consumed, decomposed, or discarded. Similarly, human beings are born and ultimately die, age, become sick, and eventually face the end of their living span. An apple does not possess a sense of time because it is not a conscious being, but a human being does.

Human beings impose various meanings on our life and set living goals to achieve during our limited period on Earth. Time is a scientific tool to measure the movement of objects between distances and to organize our daily lives. However, there is no objective time, and it cannot be recorded or measured at the moment of an individual's death or even after the extinction of humanity. Time may not be a relevant factor in empty space but it is a fundamental aspect of human life.

Personal Perception and Measurement of Time

For human beings, time is a sense that we have acquired. We feel our personal existence moving away, diminishing, and progressing through a sequence of events marked by years and days. This progression is remembered and stored in our memory, though it can seem as if it moves in slow motion or quickly depending on our emotional state. When we are in pain or suffering, time can seem to move slowly, while we may wish for it to pass quickly.

From a physical perspective, we can measure the total distance we have traveled over days, hours, and minutes. Physiologically, we can measure the number of heartbeats in a minute, hour, or throughout our entire lifespan. However, these measurements are only significant in the context of human life, as time is constantly reinforced by clocks and calendars and acknowledged mentally by conscious beings.

Ultimately, when we die, both our physical body and our conscious mind dissipate, along with our personal sense of time. This highlights the subjective nature of time and its importance in our daily lives and our quest to organize and make sense of the world.