My goal for nosquareinch.com is that it would be a place where ideas can be presented openly and honestly. I've asked my friend Nate to post when he has time and present his ideas on life, faith, and whatever else comes to mind. You can check out more of Nate's work at natekohrs.com.
I've recently been spending some time in Australia, visiting my wife while she is on a work assignment here. From what I've seen, I can safely say that it's a beautiful country, with more to explore and see than could probably ever be done in one lifetime. I'm a fan of OZ.
From my extensive study of Australia I've learned that it's quite far from the US. In fact, it's so far that depending on where you are in OZ, you're as many as 16 hours ahead of Eastern Time. This is a strange concept to me... not the fact that Australia and the US are in different time zones... I'm vaguely schooled in geography, so the earth's rotation, seasonal variations, and the relative location of the sun are all ideas that I'm remotely familiar with. What I'm referring to is the relativity of time itself.
For the sake of practicality, we (humanity) have devised a clever measuring system we call "time". It's a way for us to measure life, growth, death, celestial events, traffic commutes, and football games (that's American football mates). We even measure it down to smaller and smaller increments so that we can be more and more specific about when things begin and end. Time is a paradigm we have built our societies around, and rightly so. We all have a limited amount of this time commodity in which to live, to be young, to have children, to learn, to grow, to build something, to enjoy retirement... and the list goes on. Since our lives are finite, we must rigorously delineate the span of our perceived existence. Because we cannot change time, we have grown more and more precise in the way we label it, in an effort to approximate a sense of relative control over it.
But Einstein proved once and for all in the early 20th century, that time isn't at all a fixed thing. It's inextricably woven into the fabric of space, and can warp and change depending on where you are and how fast (or slow) you're moving. Time itself, therefore, is all about perception. However, Einsteins theory actually breaks down when we try to rewind the cosmic clock back to the very beginning of the universe. Since the theory of General Relativity was first published, many scientists have worked on developing a theory that can take us back to the very instant the universe began, and beyond(??). These collaborative efforts have come to be referred to as String Theory.
I've read a bit about String Theory (a 'theory of everything' that seeks to unite quantum mechanics and general relativity to comprehensively define the moment of the universe's origin among other cool stuff) and I find it absolutely fascinating, though my actual grasp of the concept is likely akin to a grasshopper reading Shakespeare; cursory at best.
Regardless of my lack of comprehension, the relativity of time really intrigues me, and perhaps helps to shape my own perception of this 'commodity ' we humans measure out so precisely. Practically speaking, we only have a limited amount of time to work with. Though in reality its not a fixed thing, as far as our daily lives are concerned we're as bound by time as we are by gravity. Oh, and apparently gravity's relative too....