Opinion Express View on time and space: Time, after time

When the universe was young — a mere billion years old — time moved five times slower than it does now. The landmark findings of astronomers — who, when they look back into space, look back at time — are, of course, difficult to decode. But even for those who think that Einstein’s General Relativity refers to military leaders in his family tree, time is something that is easily understood. Human beings, whether they understand the secrets of the cosmos or not, know that time stretches and shrinks. Minutes can become hours, and years can go by in a blink.

Think back to the first years in school, the first summer holidays, first friends. Each year, each day, sometimes was filled with a sense of possibility — when the world was new, there was time and wonder. There is, of course, always enough in the world to keep people young. But most people, in T S Eliot’s words, think that there is “time yet for a hundred decisions and indecisions”. Contrary to the cliché, time doesn’t always fly when you’re having fun. For some, it seems to go faster as they grow older, and the long list of what-could-have-beens grows longer. Responsibility and routine — a rut, in other words — becomes almost seamlessly the default reality.

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And in the age of social media, with curated photographs of everyone you know living the YOLO life, and the unthinking morbidity of “bucket lists”, the sense of time slipping away is all the more acute. There is a silver lining, though. Unlike the universe, there is no immutable law that guides what people do with the time they have. For all the trappings of nostalgia, there’s always the chance of discovering wonder around the corner.