Starting 2019 -- Time and Reality

While I am glad to see another year begin, it always makes me feel both happy and sad. Happy that I have existed long enough to see it happen again, happy for another new start although I know things from the past will follow me, and happy to see everyone's optimism. Sad to know little of the bad from last year has really changed and world threats still remain.

I didn't wait up to see the ball drop in New York. I didn't recognize the singers and the whole scene was just too noisy, plus I've seen it so many times in the past it has lost its thrill. However, this annual event occurring according to the human means of keeping time always leaves me contemplating time and reality.

We think of reality as everything around us, our place in time and location, what is where, who is here and there, what we know and expect; and it is. Yet each of us has a different perception of what is taking place. If you consider we have @7.7 billion people on Earth, there are @7.7 different views of reality. So it is a very personal concept and a concept that is constantly changing even though we all exist on the same planet at the same time.

Albert Einstein is quoted as having said, "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." I have to admit I am pretty much unconscious about all my body's atoms and particles, but the reality existing in my mind gathered from my senses is very persistent.

With every second of time reality changes somewhere, so many different 'realities' exist. And quantum physics, with a very different concept of time, place, and existence, has an entirely different concept of reality which is: nothing exists until it is measured. This goes for any particle since, until it is observed, and depending on the method of observation, determines if it will be either energy or matter. My guess is that maybe an existence in a body made up of quantum particles makes it real, too.

So here each of us is living on the cusp of time. One second before is history, and one second ahead is the future. I suspect it is a good thing we can ignore this to get on with our day-to-day lives, and I'm glad to have my memories of the past and expectations for the future. 

*image from Wikipedia