Einstein, pondering what a beam of
light would look like if one were to catch up to it, and what would happen to
time once you had caught it, came up with the notion of the flexibility of
time. To greatly simplify things,
the faster you move, the slower time goes. So, if you were to fly at near the speed of light, time
would virtually stop. To put this
is in a more realistic way, if you were to ride a fighter jet from LA to Boston
at top speed, you would be fractionally ahead in time (and younger) than anyone
who hadn’t traveled at such a speed.
Therefore every time you fly, drive, or move, and someone else does not,
you are traveling through time at a different speed. You, my friend, are a time traveler.
This brings up a rather interesting
thought experiment: Imagine I told
you I had invented a time machine, but the machine only allowed the person to
travel through time at the same speed as everyone else. Have I invented a time machine if the
speed the user travels though time equals the speed the non-user travels
through time? What if this machine
is a supersonic plane, and the flyer moves fractionally faster through time
than the non-flyer, but at the same rate as anyone flying at the same speed for
the same duration? Is this a time
machine?
This brings me to a literary
thought experiment. What
relationship does our memory have with time? Is there Proustian time within the taste of a madeleine
dipped in tea? And can we ever
recapture time by writing about it?
I would put forth that in writing about the past, even the fictional
past, we come closer than we otherwise could in just attempting to remember the
past. In writing, we can extend
the past, stretch it out, record not only it but our thoughts on it, and in
that way we can give time the time to exist as it is, not as our imperfect
memories recall it.
