To Be Truly Timeless

Timeless. It’s such a funny word. We use it, timelessly. It’s just like the word automobile, timeless is. You see, both words share a relationship in being commonly used, but not used in a literal definition. For example, automobile basically means a vehicle that can drive itself. Unless we spontaneously use a highway system from I, Robot, where all vehicles are truly autonomous, the use of the word automobile in reference to driving is technically incorrect, as we still drive the cars. The word “timeless” is the same way. We normally use it to describe something that will seemingly always exist, but the word “timeless” is technically referring to some sort of void in time itself. From a scientific standpoint, we know that that is in no place on earth true. I don’t see, say, glassware frozen in time while in the process of shattering on the ground, do you? With that said, our usage of the word “timeless” is just as inaccurate is the usage of the word “automobile.” But that does not mean that the word timeless hasn’t fed a new topic into my evermore-contemplating mind: what would the world be like if time itself was nonexistent? Or behaved differently? Gosh, I sound like Steven Hawking!

More than the strictest communist government humans have ever conceived, it seems that time is probably the most powerful, and effective, government we have had to abide to. Think about it. Time affects every part of our lives. Not only does it govern, say, our work schedule, it also controls something as small and insignificant as, say, pouring a glass of water. It seems like one of the most powerful forces of the universe that we are exposed to. Yet ironically, we don’t really pay much attention to it as a force because it’s invisible, and really doesn’t behave as indiscreetly as magnetism or gravity. But what’s funny is that, if you really think about it, time is what allows magnetism and gravity to occur in the first place. Even more ironically, time is perhaps what allows us to even perceive the existence of these forces in the first place. In fact, it must be what allows us to comprehend anything for that matter. Think about it. We often organize information on the basis of the flow of time. For example, we understand that our grandma didn’t come from her granddaughter because the grandmother existed before her granddaughter. If you really think about it, everything would be out of whack if time itself was out of whack.

If time itself wasn’t behaving normally and was stopped, our universe would most certainly not be the same. For one, every mechanical incident would also be stopped just the same. For example, gravity would no longer be pulling, and electromagnetism would be void everywhere. But I’m not just talking about the normal forces you see day to day, either. You see, nothing would change in the first place, because there would be no mechanics responsible for any change whatsoever, even changes that would occur if the obvious forces are void (e.g. objects would not float away from a planet if gravity was suddenly lost due to a lack of time.) This is very difficult to imagine, not only because we are brought up in a world where time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’… into the future, but also because we literally would be able to sense it to begin with. Let me explain. It would be so because our very perception depends on the sorts of mechanics mentioned earlier. Yet I am not just talking about how our bodies would be unable to function in seeing or hearing, however. I am also talking about, say, the very light or sound waves that are used as a source of sight and hearing: they wouldn’t be able to travel in the first place!

So, in a nutshell, I think that a universe without time really is pretty much not comprehendible, but if I had to guess as to what it was like, I would say that it would be an area void of – maybe everything? Maybe matter itself is a mere mechanical event that literally depends on time just as gravity and magnetism do. But on another hand, I think that the only plausible universe without time that can exist in a physical sense would be a universe that had at one time had time to organize all the physical events to begin with, then suddenly the waves of time ceased. Think about it.