MY DAD USED TO TELL A STORY ABOUT HIS FATHER. "MY POP WAS BORN at one minute to midnight on the last day of the week, in the last month of the year, in the last year of the century. If it had been one minute later, he wouldn't have been born at all!"
Well, my dad told a great story—although completely tongue-in-cheek. But as a kid, I believed that my granddad really had made it in just under the wire—"in the nick of time." And although I grew up and realized the silliness of that story, I still have had to spend much of my life struggling with other false concepts about time: not enough time ... too much time ... lost time.
Since the age of Aristotle, philosophers and scientists have explored the meaning of time—whether it exists objectively, irrespective of changing events, or subjectively, dependent entirely on our human conceptions of it. Whatever the case, today time—whether public/external or private/internal—often rules our lives like a cruel master: Get to class, get to the airport, get to the meeting, get home, get ready, get on top of things. Get married; get a family; get rich; get a career; get a new career. Time's a'wastin'; tempus fugit.
