There are two kinds of time: objective time, and subjective time. Objective time is defined by science and math. There are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day, about thirty days per month, and twelve months per year. The clock represents objective time.
Objective time exists in a realm outside of our control. Nothing on this earth has any effect on objective time. There is no storm that can prevent the passing of time. There is no force that can increase the speed of time. No matter how badly we want the school year to pass so it can be summer again, no matter how much we want a night out with our friends to never end- there is nothing we can do to stop the ticking of the clock.
Subjective time is our perception of objective time. Subjective time is influenced by our feelings and our emotions. For example, I can be sitting in my Microeconomics class on Monday mornings. The class is only fifty minutes. But because it is Monday morning, I’m tired, and there are other things I would rather be doing besides learning about supply and demand, it feels like the class is three hours long. Objectively, the class is only fifty minutes. Subjectively, it feels like it has been three hours.
I distinctly remember a moment from the summer of 2002, between second and third grade. I was laying on my back on the couch in the family room of my home in Colorado, and my legs, for some reason, were sticking up in the air. I remember thinking, “Man. Summer is going by so slow.” Objectively, summer was two and a half months long. In my eight year old mind, subjectively, summer was a million years.
In my eighteen years and roughly seven months of life, I have come to notice an interesting fact about the passage of time. As we get older, the time goes by quicker. While the summer after second grade for me went by slower than frozen molasses, time has felt like it has picked up speed. Each year of high school went by progressively faster. This past summer went by in the blink of an eye. One minute I was on the stage at my high school graduation receiving my diploma and hugging my favorite history teacher- the next, I was on a plane flying to Richmond, listening to a playlist my two best friends made for me before I left home.
This is a question I often ponder when it is three a.m. and I can’t sleep- why is it that as we get older, time goes by faster? Is it because with age comes responsibility? Certainly now, I have more things to worry about than my eight year old self did. Maybe adults are more consumed with balancing work and family that time takes a back seat to other factors in life.
On the other hand, adults are more aware of time than children are. The summer of 2011, after my junior year of high school, I worked as an intern in the legal department of a business located in downtown Denver. The driving force behind every action in that legal department was a deadline. Contracts had to be drawn up by this date. Meetings with clients took place at this time and took this long depending how important the client was to the business. Everything was dictated by objective time. Therefore, adults have to be more attuned to time and have to have an awareness of the passing of time. Maybe it is this hyper-acuteness to time in addition to the added responsibility of life explains why time goes by faster as one grows up.
I never realized before how connected time and music are prior to taking this course. Music can be a manifestation of time, whether that is our reactions to and our attitudes towards objective time, or our perceptions of time- what I have defined as subjective time.
I am an only child, but I grew up with three of my cousins. In a sense, they are the siblings I never had. One of my cousins is my age, and one of his interests is time travel. He is constantly trying to think of new scientific ways that could make time travel possible.
I think that music is our time machine. Music has an extraordinary power of influencing our emotions, and the lyrics of a song can put into words what we cannot. When you listen to a song, it can take you back to a certain time in your life and you relive and experience all those same feelings you had when you first experienced that moment. For example, when I listen to “Hero/Heroine” by Boys Like Girls, I am fourteen years old again driving up the hill for my first day of high school. Or when I listen to “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri, I’m on the stage at high school graduation. Those songs bring with them all of the memories and emotions I felt when I was going to my first day of high school and receiving my high school diploma. In this way, music becomes our time machine. When we listen to Mozart, we are transported back to the 1700s. When we listen to music that is native to a culture, we’re taken to that place and hearing what is important to the people of that culture. Music is our time machine.