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Time In Flight

Time in Flight! Older people all tell us time's faster, it seems, When they think back to much younger days. Is it true, something real, or just fanciful flight? Time in school (ask a fool) would give snails brain malaise. While old age knows less fact, has more dreams, I'm not thinking at all here of personal plight. It's my view, near the end, we'll have less time to spend Chasing dreams, we might like to recall, For our dreams, have been winnowed as time passes by, I'm convinced that's a wash, although age may appall: We've less energy we can expend, Fewer eggs in our pantries we're hoping to fry. Multitasking's most likely retards making hay, For our brains, although clear, have slowed down. And the balls you can juggle at last disappear. For the time comes when each man must transfer his crown, And his longings retire from the fray: May God give me the Grace to acknowledge Time's spear! Brian Johnston May 5,2017 Poet's Notes: Time's arrow (or spear in my poem) reflects a broad definition of entropy. According to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy in a closed system increases with time and thus explains the fact that time flows only in one direction. Entropy can be viewed, literally, as an expression of disorder or randomness in a system. The universe itself is heading for a cold death according to modern science! My conclusion here is that it's not that time is going faster, but that we are going slower. We remember how much we used to be able to accomplish in a day and compare it to our present life. The difference suggests to us that time is going faster. I think that is amusing!

Copyright © | Year Posted 2017




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Date: 5/8/2017 5:14:00 AM
I understand you Brian. My own situation is a different one. Due to my health situation, I am often in bed for longer periods of time. My concept of time gets distorted. But my mind races and thinks ahead. And it's sometimes a desparate thing, realizing only five minutes have passed while you hope it was an hour... It is indeed different, but I think that this whole time concept is an interesting one.
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Brian Johnston
Date: 5/8/2017 10:37:00 AM
Indeed... a paradox wrapped in an enigma! Ha!
Date: 5/7/2017 3:16:00 AM
I like your notes, but then I like to present you with my own observation: when you do a lot in a day, the time seems to go faster, so why doesn't time seem to go slowewr when you can't perform as much as you could anymore? :) Discuss!
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Brian Johnston
Date: 5/8/2017 2:10:00 AM
When you remember being able to accomplish more in a day twenty years ago, however you are comparing personal efficiency at different stages of your life. I think that most older people get that it is a joke to say time is going faster, but painful to admit we are slower?
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Brian Johnston
Date: 5/8/2017 2:05:00 AM
No matter how much you do in a day, if things you expected to get done don't the suggestion is that the day raced by, that there were "Not enough hours in the day." That is a different situation than I address in this poem.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things