“I am very busy. I don’t have time for this!”

We all have heard or said this at least once in our lives. Maybe in different variations but, quite same nevertheless. And as weird as it may sound, I have always found it hitting a curious tap on my head. I often found it funny that we so easily talk about “having” or “not having” time in our own possessions when we don’t even bother to know what it actually is. Yes, I am talking about time in itself.
Do we know what it actually is?

It all started when we needed to map repetitive scenarios that occurred around us, the main and initial reason of it became measuring ends and beginnings of days and nights. Quite a logical thing to do, no doubt. And we have been perfecting this task, growing more accurate ever since. But, haven’t you ever wondered “Why 3’o clock is 3’o clock? Why can’t it be 6’o clock, or any other? Who decides what time is it?”

Well, I did. And did more than just wonder. Back in my younger days, I directly asked this to people in my vicinity and believe me, I got stared back with the weirdest of glances in return. “What kind of stupid question is that?” and “Who even cares about 3’o clock?” were most of the replies. Unfortunately, no one gave the answer that I was so desperately seeking. And for a brief moment, I genuinely got convinced that this actually was a stupid thing to ask. Until I realized it wasn’t. I understood that no one gave the answer because they didn’t care.
They didn’t think.

Then I was forced to change my question to “How could we not think about something that is so fundamentally interwoven in our reality? How could we not know what time actually is, when we have been feeling its constant ticking ever since the dawn of mankind? How can we see it yet it is not visible? How can we feel it yet it is not touchable? Have we invented this entity for our own sake? Or it is a fundamental property of space?” We still don’t know for sure.

Yet we feel it etching, moment by moment. The infamous arrow of time from past to present. Something which I have purposefully denoted in the art above by subtle use of darkening and lightening of shade around a watch, dark signifying the chunk of present we feel every moment and light portraying what has traveled into the past. We all feel it, yet we don’t know what it is…

But, why? Are we not capable of knowing? Or have we just stopped thinking?

Well, I will leave that for you to answer.

P.S – The art you see in this post was created by using Fresh Paint app.