Standstill...

Time is relative.

1 man year is supposedly 7 dog years.

1 earth year is supposedly 12 Jupiter years.

In this context, one can argue that man lives longer than the dog and Jupiter lives longer than the earth. (The latter which we all know is scientifically crass)

But what if I said…

1 man year is supposedly 12 Jupiter years.

Does this mean people (if any) on Jupiter have shorter life spans than man or simply that the orbital ellipticity, eccentricity, inclination and rotational period makes Jupiter have a longer Sidereal period.

By now one must have figured the major flaw in my argument. All standards for comparison used are us, man. The dog does not know its being robbed of its dog years nor do the “Jupiterians” care. But we do. We measure everything relative to the time we have on this planet, relative to our ‘life’.

Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times seventeen years.

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'Well, maybe it is true,' Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. 'Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long.”

“But in that event, who wants one?”

“I do,” Dunbar told him.

“Why?” Clevinger asked.

“What else is there?”

(Extraction : Catch – 22 By Joseph Heller)

It is hard to fathom that time is on standstill. What with deadlines to reach, people to squish, power to gain, money to make… Time is running out!

But if you looked, if you actually looked, you are but a passing millisecond in the scheme of the universe. Your life is almost equivalent to no time passed at all. This deduction is not aimed to humble our being nor to exult our ‘soul’. It is a mere attempt at understanding my millisecond.

Lets not confuse this question with the more elusive why am I here? Or what is it that I am supposed to do? It is more on the grounds of what my friend Dunbar just said, “What else is there?”

To be contd…