"where does time go after it passes you by?" (Einstein?)

I found this a really interesting statement. I saw this quote on a picture of the man Einstein sitting on a rock by the sea with girlie sandals on... I was quite tickled because Albert Einstein was quite a hit with the ladies in his day, I'm told! Anyway, I digress.

Time; the experience of it is so subjective, so relative.. Even as we accept that time has specific units of measurements and is more or less standard on our level, it moves faster or slower depending on your circumstances. I wonder if we could say that in the same way as finger prints are unique to the individual, so is time! For instance we could say at 16:50:30, the subjective experience of time for me, a particular event happened and time moved in Gray time, a subset of 'real' time.
You know how when you are having fun, time passes so quickly and when you are not it seems to drag on forever? The second hand on the clock is not necessarily moving slower, but time is moving more slowly.

Anyway, I took my daughter to church on Sunday because she asked me to and it really struck me how things seemed to have stalled and yet moved so far ahead. As I walked into the church building which I had attended a few times before in a previous life, before I had my children it really struck me how the experience of time changed when you entered the realm of parenthood. It felt like I had moved into a completely different lane as far as time was concerned. It actually felt as if I was in the fast lane on the autobahn. no kidding! The strangest thing about this realization is that it took a trip to a place I used to go to in the past, to make me realize how much my life had moved on.... As to which direction specifically my life is headed, well I cannot say for sure, but the one thing I know is that I'm experiencing the passage of time at a relatively faster pace. It seems an oxymoron to state that especially as time is supposed to be the thing that has a standard unit that allows us to measure things against it!!

One of my friends from school (I shall call her A), mentioned to another friend of mine (who I shall call B) how much I'd changed. I don't think she meant it in a very positive sense. B came to my defense, rather emotively proclaiming that this was untrue. I explained to B that she would not be able to appreciate the extent of change because we had both moved into the fast lane. In a manner of speaking this was a case of two trains on parallel tracks moving in the same direction at the same speed, and a third heading in a similar direction moving at a different speed. obviously as far as the two trains moving at the same speed, there is no change in speed... the only way to ascertain their relative motion is to compare their movement to some other 'factor' besides each other!! Having put it that way, my friend,B, got the point! In her usual subjective/judgmental manner, she had forgotten that she was subject to the same 'rules' of change; she had forgotten the fact that maybe, just maybe, she had changed too. So, should we apologize for the fact that we've changed lanes and some of our friends are still in the old lanes, or have moved into different lanes too? Must they judge us because we have exercised our freewill and 'moved on'; evolved or not? We do and they do, although neither is required.

Actually, the recognition of what we see as the passage of time is based on the premise that change occurs. If nothing ever changed, would time cease to exist? It is actually difficult to conceptualize circumstances surrounding time, inexistent. As long as there is change (one form of energy to another, motion from one place to another, life/death etc), there is time. So could we even dare to say that time, in it's own unique way, is ALIVE?

Well, when time passes by, does it leave behind a signature? Does some of it stay behind and is the rest is yet to come? Is there new time and old time, like you have old shoes and new shoes? Does time that's passed by have an old smell like old books in the library? Does it have the 'appearance' of faded ink on ancient manuscripts? Time, is just another component of the equations that we as mortals use to explain events in our rather limited way. Does that make it any more real or otherwise as the air which we breathe or the beating of our hearts? That will just send me on another trip of questions and I might end up on something that has nothing to do with time, so I shall just end it by asking that wonderful thought-provoking question again... Where does time go when it passes (us) by?