People before me have long opined on the finite nature of time. And I have come to make peace with this fact lately. I was talking about this in last post. 1
My own understanding of time has developed by meandering through various situations in life. Often I go back to two memories whenever I feel a little rushed. Incidentally both happened during the UG years at IIT BHU, Varanasi.
The Arrow of Time
In a Classical Physics lecture, I remember asking Professor ON Singh during my first year, why Issac Newton described time as a flowing river?2 It seems a bit naive now to ask such a meta question, but back then, my mind was less cluttered and I had not developed shame/qualms of cutting a sorry figure. It so happened that I had just started deeply thinking about Entropy/second law of Thermodynamics which was a happy departure from boring Greek Alphabets of JEE paper.
Professor Singh pulled me outside the class after the lecture and spent over an hour explaining the basics of time, particularly focusing on entropy and its crucial role in Classical Mechanics. He talked about Newton and the story of picking pebbles on the shore. He highlighted how entropy is fundamentally about the probability of microscopic states corresponding to a macroscopic arrangement. The natural tendency of systems to move towards states with the highest probability is what gives time its direction . So, the past is characterised by lower entropy, and the future unfolds towards higher entropy.
Prof Cox explains this a little bit too.
Harishchandra Ghat and meaning
I've spent countless hours at the Harishchandra Ghat in Varanasi. So here’s the thing about Varanasi - if you are willing to understand the city explains in ways sometimes unbelievable and sometimes indescribable. Anyway!
Coming back to the Ghats - the smell of burning flesh, the people with sticks manoeuvring the pyre, the goats eating the flowers, chantings and hullabaloo, the dogs roaming about, tourists walking by, the religious music from the temples etc. pulled me in initially. Sitting on the steps countless times, sipping a cup of Lemon Tea, made me wonder about life and often time.
Was this all there is? This questioning phase likely occurred during my second year of UG, a time when one often feels most lost. I had just finished reading Ayn Rand(trying to figure out individual purpose) and gotten into Charles Bukowski, leading to a rather critical view of everything. I particularly related to Henry Chinaski, a character who, among other things, had his testicles bitten by a rabid dog and worked at a post office. It was also when I discovered Camus and Orwell. In those formative years, one connected to Meursault from the Stranger, often thinking about the fit/outburst on the prison Chaplain3. And sometimes thinking about the tramp life and the characters from the Down and Out in Paris and London.
For a young, somewhat nihilistic(who is not at that age?) and idealistic kid, it was the perfect time to ponder these existential questions, especially about time – its nature and significance. I wondered - if the dead couldn’t come back to life then it should be pretty certain that time only moved unidirectionally and that one’s time is limited. Also that time is not contingent or dependent on anything else - it is kind of detached from anything and everything. There is this other thing I often thought - time doesn’t hold any animosity towards you, it just doesn’t care, it keeps going.
At BHU which I often call my nursery, I often had extra time compared to my friends - given I could not befriend the subject I was studying. There are countless books have been written about Banaras, Kashi ka Assi by Prof Kashinath Singh could be good start on the flavour of city.
At Harishchandra Ghat, time felt raw and going forward, may be not linear, I couldn’t ignore mortality’s certainty.
Bukowski’s Chinaski mirrored my disillusionment, Orwell sharpened my critique and showed me vagaries, and Camus framed it all in absurdity - more like, so what?
Any search for anything is meaningless still keep going, be the Sisyphus!
Time is finite and probably the only adversary one has, thus use/utilise/maximise/fight it.
Overtime I am realising that the only thing to fight against is time. It is the only game - yes it is multiplayer, often multi stage and with variable amplitudes. This is not a complex metaphysical thing, it is simple to be in and tough to play.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-stm/
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/stranger/quotes/character/the-chaplain/