Why Time Flies

Why Time Flies by Alan Burdick               Audio Book: 9 hours, 30 minutes    Hardback Book:  320 pages             

Alan Burdick sites some fascinating studies and their findings on how people and animals relate to time, to sequencing and how their concepts relate to their existence in the known now, the known past and their best guess for their futures.    As is often said, “Time Flies” or for Latin scholars, “Tempus Fugit” which sounds really catchy doesn’t it?    He explores the reasoning behind why the young think time passes so slowly while folks 50 and over feel time seriously flies.    It boils down to a math calculation that is based on the number of years you have been alive which is what  your perception is based on.    Those with many years ahead of them see years spreading out ahead of them while people on the half century mark see their mortality ahead of them and not that many years hence as when they were young.    It’s that space time continuum thing Einstein spoke of.   Your position on the question depends on where you are at on the time line of your life.    Lots of good stories and research on the subject here.    Fascinating people and insightful studies going on that will give you pause to ponder.   This book is a good mind stretcher and will have you looking at time in a far more significant way than just passing time.    You will want to be sure you utilize every second to its fullest potential.     He leaves you with Niche’s analogy of man’s relationship to time by how he builds a sandcastle.   The first man will proceed hesitantly, intent on craftsmanship yet all the while fretting all the time about the inevitable wave that will come then he is shocked by his loss when it does come.    The second man won’t even try to build a sandcastle seeing the futility of it,  why bother when the wave will just destroy it.   The third man, the paragon of manhood in Niche’s view, embraces the unavoidable and throws himself into the work regardless, joyful but not oblivious.   Burdick watched his sons building sandcastles on a beach in Normandy, France one day.    When the tide came in and destroyed the sandcastle the first time his one young son cried but he rebuilt only to have the sand castle city he and his brother rebuilt diminished again.   They built it a third time and by then the tide was coming back in and the ocean ran over the sand city, first the moat, then the city walls and then it flowed down through the streets.   Burdick’s second son stood up with his arms outstretched and faced the tide saying, “The end is near!   The end is near!”   Burdick enjoyed that response so much he envied it.   Time is full of surprises.    Time allows the builder to learn new ways of insuring the sand castle withstands the wave - incase it in something that will protect the integrity of the design and hold fast regardless of the torrent beating against it.   Time allows the builder to learn, if, he is willing to expand his mind and accept the consequence of his actions then learn from what was and what is to prepare a better way for the future.    Or as Burdick’s sons reacted either cry about where time has taken us or face it head on full force  standing up to it with that “HERE I AM TIME, COME AND GET ME!   LET’S SEE WHERE WE GO FROM HERE!’   Yeah, buddy!