Our concept of time has an all-encompassing influence on our lives. It is subtle and profound at the same time. For the most part, we are not aware of how we think about time. On the surface, it is both a presence and a factor that is taken as a given. More deeply, time shapes not only how we view the world, it actually moulds our ability to think.

I don’t know if time exists ‘out there’. Probably it is a construct that exists only in my head. It provides a way of thinking and talking about…. well, everything. Fortunately, you have a similar model in your head, so we can think and talk about time together. We do this a lot; it is probably the most universally complained about topic after the weather,

Time is not a physical entity. It flows and gets into everything, like water, but while things can be made water-proof, you can’t time-proof anything. You can also measure time, just as you can calculate a quality of sand by volume or weight, but whereas you can handle sand and transport it, with time it tends to be the other way round; it handles and transports us.

Time is like the verb ‘to be’. A language without ‘to be’ would be almost impossible to use (somebody did design one once). In the same way, thinking about or doing anything without time seeping into our reasoning would mean the end of reason itself.

So the time has come to close this post. Whether I do it now or later is irrelevant to everyone but me. It might be of course that I have already finished it, that would be in the past. The great thing about writing is that you can always return to your work and re-edit it, or cut out the bits you don’t like. Time’s not like that.