Now still our only hour as seconds test science

SO, another year has just begun and we humans seem to be the only ones who are aware of it. The ant crawling across the garden wall, the strawberry plant in the hanging basket and even the neighbour’s dog seem completely unaware of what has happened.

Which makes me wonder what it is about us that wants to count and measure passing time?

From our earliest origins we have busied ourselves with recording the sequence of days, the seasons, the years.

The earliest calendars used the phases of the moon to record the rhythms of life. When the lunar cycles didn’t synchronise fully with our experience of time we turned to the sun and now we rely on the regular pulses of atoms to keep time for us.

Time Magazine last week listed what it considers the top 25 inventions for 2013. Among them is the “cronut”, which has nothing to do with chronology but is a hybrid doughnut and croissant taking the calorific world by storm.

More serious though is the new atomic clock which improves on the previous model which had been using excited cesium atoms and is off by one second every 100 million years. For scientists this is too sloppy, hence the upgrade. The latest atomic timepiece measures ytterbium atoms trapped in cages of light called optical lattices. It is 100 times more accurate than the previous device and will only be off by one second over the entire lifetime of the universe. So significant is the invention of the Optical Lattice Clock that scientists expect they will have to revise their definition of a second that has stood since 1967. Could the esteemed scientists be “second guessing” themselves?

But no matter what clock or designer watch you are using to measure time, we cannot deny the evidence that it is passing relentlessly. Partnering that realisation is our deepest fear that old slippery-slinky time is passing us by. We worry that somehow we are missing out on all that life has to offer in each passing tick.

We also know that no tattoo, poster, or Facebook post declaring our intention to “carpe diem – seize the day”, will bring about the change we desire if we do not learn to act decisively and passionately in each present moment.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “one of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one”.

So as we contemplate another circuit around the sun which we have chosen to number 2014, perhaps we should not gaze too far down the road, because expectation and fear are closely related, just as dreams and nightmares are.

A more skilful response may be to show loving kindness to each other and to the earth, in every breath and every moment as it occurs. After all, time is simply a concept that indexes our existence. The only influence we have over reality is how we act now. Happy New Year.

Peter is a pastoral therapist and conflict mediator