ambivalence

Does anybody know what time it is? - Chicago
Your “now” is not my “now” - Charles Lamb, 1817
Time is just like another direction in space - Stephen Hawking, 1990
What I’m really interested in is whether God could have made the world in a
different way; that is, whether the necessity of logical simplicity leaves any
freedom at all. - Albert Einstein
We could imagine a world in which causality does not lead to a consistent order of
earlier and later. In such a world the past and the future would not be irrevocably
separated, but could come together in the same present. And we could meet our
former selves of several years ago and talk to them. However, it is an empirical
fact that our world is not this type. Time order reflects the casual order of the
Universe. - Hans Reichenbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, 1951
What then is time? If someone asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to someone
who asks, I know not. - Aurelius Augustinus, Bishop of Hippo in N. Africa
Neither past nor future can be changed, they could only be discovered.
-Paul Anderson, Past Times
How can the past and future be when the past no longer is and the future is not yet?
As for the present, if it were always the present and never moved on to become the
past, it would not be time but eternity. - Augustine
You are so part of the world that your slightest action contributes to its reality.
Your breath changes the atmosphere. Your encounters with others alter the fabrics
of their lives, and the lives of those who come in contact with them.
- Jane Roberts

When I was just a child, I used to think the world revolved around me, and that I was the lead character in that world. (But of course, now I know better.) Being the sheltered child I was, I guess it was inevitable that I grew ignorant to worldly things and started dwelling with the abstract, or perhaps one can easily pass that off as day-dreaming. And like any other inquisitive minds, I wondered about life and its purpose. And just like any other man that ever walked the earth, I am nowhere close to the answer.

A topic that intrigues me ceaselessly is ‘time’. Isn’t it amazing how “we can never step into the same river twice” (Plato), and that we can only experience one direction a moment at any one time? As intangible as it is orderly, time is just like any other remarkable product of nature, confounding us by the very necessity of its existence. It provides an additional depth to our 3-dimensional world and bestow us with a point of reference to our lives, acting as the marker to the beginning, the end, and everything in between. As time brings forth abundant opportunities to those who wait, it robs them off their lives and everything that they attained. Ever since I became aware of this cruel fact, I have always thought that time is a merciless creature that destroy mankind slowly but surely. And I cannot seem to get over the fact that our fleeting lives adds up to only an insignificant percentage of the present age of the planet, not to mention the whole baffling universe.