The True Properties of Time

I don't care what Einstein said, there are just two important properties of time that we need to know about:

    1. Time speeds up as we get older; and
    2. Everything takes twice as long as you think it will, even if you count on it taking twice as long as you  think it will.

Allow me to elucidate. First, time does not actually speed up, of course; it only seems to. Each day, week or year is a smaller percentage of your life than the one before it. When you were ten, 10% of your life had to pass before you reached your next birthday. When you're 50, only 2% has to do so, thus the year seems to go by more quickly. I asked my friend Tadd how he would explain the phenomenon. I didn't tell him my answer, but his was virtually the same. He thought in terms of trips around the sun: the more orbits you've completed, the less significant each additional one seems (mathematically, at least). So by virtue of this independent, unbiased confirrmation, Tadd's and my hypothesis is at least a scientific law, and I'm sticking to it.

The second force is akin to Parkinson's Law, which states: "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion." But I think the ETTAL principle ("everything takes twice as long") rises to an even higher level: that of scientific theory.  A scientific theory is a statement that explains a group of observations or phenomena, including hypotheses and laws, and accounts for a wider variety of events. Broad acceptance of a theory comes when it has been tested repeatedly on new data and has been used to make accurate predictions. In some cases, such as the germ theory of infectious disease, a theory becomes so completely accepted that it stops being referred to as a theory and is just taken as a plain and simple fact.

I have been testing ETTAL for many decades and have always found it to be true. No matter how well I plan, everything takes longer than it should; roughly twice as long, in fact. I think it fair to say, without equivocation or peradventure, that ETTAL has finally risen to the level of scientific fact.

For example, just a few days ago I bought a new filing cabinet. I was tired of my black, metal, two-drawer version that always wanted to tip forward if I fully extended the top drawer. At Office Depot I found a handsome lateral file in a dark cherry finish at a good price. There was "some assembly required," of course, but that's not a big deal. Or so I thought.

My first mistake was trying to read the instructions. I should have just looked at the pictures; instructions slow you down. The second problem was that I didn't close the door to my office to keep the cats out. Those of you who have cats know that anything new attracts them faster than catnip. They wanted to be in the empty box. They wanted play cat hockey with screws and other bits and pieces. They wanted to get inside the old cabinet when I removed the drawers. With their help, assembling the thing took most of the afternoon. Once I got it together there was the question of where to put it. The planned location wasn't as convenient as I had thought it would be, so I had to rearrange the furniture, which meant I also had to deal with computer cables, etc.

When I got everything in place, there was the matter of the files themselves. Obviously I couldn't just take the old files and drop them into the new drawers. Certainly not. The new cabinet is build for hanging files, so I have to make new folders for each subject and new labels and plastic tabs for each folder. As I was doing that, I decided to riffle through each file and weed out old material and duplicates. This was time consuming in itself, but as the pile of discarded papers grew I needed two trips to the recylcle bins and even some time to burn sensitive material in the fireplace (because my shredder got lost in the move from Baton Rouge).

Well, I finally got it done and I'm patting myself on the back. I was able to "reduce, reuse and recycle" and learn a little something about the theory of relativity.

The end result, with WhoDat asleep on my chair.

Close-up of the new piece.

During this project I came across some worthwhile things I'd totally forgotten about, which brings me to one more force at work in our lives. Not only does time speed up, and not only do things take longer, but we start thinking about the hereafter, as in:  I walk into a room and ask myself, "What am I here after?" [Ba-dum-bum!]

Apropos of that thought, I leave you with this wonderful little number in which award-winning cabaret singer Pam Peterson sings a great parody about the challenges of an aging memory. Check this out, it's a hoot!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzSaoN2LdfU

Stuart