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White Nights of Relative Time - Netrimis
White Nights of Relative Time - Netrimis
Simona Mihalca
Alas, the number of times I have heard that Time is Relative. It does not get
any truer every time someone quotes Einstein. It does not get any deeper when
someone creates philosophies about it.
Even if you cannot really grasp the details of time, we can observe it. The sun
rises in the morning, showering the world with light. The evening gets colder and
darker, only to turn into pitch black night. Simple enough, or so I thought, in my
ignorant position in central Europe. I always assumed that I could tell the time by
looking outside, seeing where the sun is. I thought my body was just that smart
and it had developed a rhythm accordingly. Science backed me up, describing
the circadian rhythm as our internal clock, the 24-hour physiological process
that tells us when to sleep, to wake up, to eat. Back in 1972, Moore RY and
Eichler VB published a study on circadian rhythms in mammals. It pinpointed
their existence to pacemakers in the brain, which are made out of thousands of
neurons, which group in structures called the SCN or the suprachiasmatic nuclei.
When you wake up in full light, feeling refreshed and ready for a new day. You get
up, ready to meet the world. Then you check out the time and its 5:30! Betrayal!
How could it be that early? How could you have gotten up so early. Betrayed by
your own body. Or am I? Looking back to cold hard facts, we immediately find
that, actually, exposure to light early in the day (at dawn) advances the onset of
activity in humans. Conversely, by being exposed to light late in the day (at
dusk), ones onset of inactivity is being delayed. (Derk-Jan Dijk, Simon N. Archer,
2009)
The day passes, you visit and visit, get tired. You make your way back to the
hotel and get ready to call it a day. Its 11PM and light is still everywhere. You
reconsider everything you thought you knew about time and nature. Now its
1AM. As I was writing my project due the next day, I began to contemplate on
the nature of time. It was still light outside. In that moment I realised just how
little I knew of time and how limited a perspective mine is. Time can move
differently for different people, but you never think of it. Time shapes
civilizations, both in every point of their history and throughout it.
What if timed moved differently for you? How would you community or society
be different if you had those 80 days a year of never-ending light. Sure enough,
you would save some money on electricity. But what about how that shapes you
as a human? How you expect to stay up late? To create beautiful poetry and
music enveloped in this light? It could make you a completely different person. I
wished to say day after day, but even that saying loses some of its meaning.
Light and dark determine one day, but determine it differently. Time affects us at
every point.
What a treacherous beast time is! How hard it is to rise and how easy we fall. You
walk among cities that are living tales of glorious and opulent ages of the past.
You admire tradition, art and architecture, you stroll on streets that are the
testament of how the tides of time turn. How fickle our heart, to give such
glamour to the past, to choose to see the shining lights and the wonderful
colours, yet disregard everything else, sitting in the corner of our eyes. We yearn
for La Belle poque, thinking it will be just us the ones to sit in the outstanding
palaces and attend the famous and infamous balls. We see ourselves friends with
all the right people, the ones time has bestowed greatness upon. It is easy to
dream of time turning back and leaving you a victor.
Simona Mihalca