TIME – Our Most Valuable Treasure

It is now January and a new year! January marks the start of a new cycle of moments, days, weeks, months, and seasons. A time for new beginnings, new goals, new hopes – a time “to start over,” looking and moving forward with new excitement and new energy.   

As we begin the new year, let’s examine time – what it is and what it means in our lives. We track time in units of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades, centuries, and millennia.

We use time to manage our lives.  We sleep and wake in allotments of time. We eat our meals, see our family and friends, make appointments, work, relax, and travel in allotments of time. Time seems simple; time seems natural.

We think of time as having three components – past, present, future. We remember the past; we live in the present; we anticipate the future. We also understand the cyclical nature of time. That is why we consider the New Year as a new beginning, a reset of our goals, intentions, and actions.  

Time is very difficult to understand using science and mathematics. Even to clearly understand how the international standard of time, the second, is measured using the frequency of the cesium atom requires an in-depth understanding of mathematics and atomic physics.

In science, there are different definitions of time. In one, time is defined by mathematical equations, and time is a quantity or parameter, referred to as “coordinate” time. A second definition of time comes from Einstein’s theories of relativity, where it is a dimension in addition to the three dimensions of space we’re familiar with. It’s a direction in four-dimensional spacetime.

These two notions of time – the quantum mechanical idea, in which time is a mere parameter, versus the relativistic idea that time is a dimension in spacetime are difficult for scientists to reconcile. Combining quantum mechanics and general relativity does not address one key question: Why does time only seem to flow in one direction?  With a third definition, time is neither a parameter in equations nor a dimension in spacetime, but a direction – pointing from the past to the future. (The definitions above are summaries from BBC Science Focus Magazine, by Jim al Khalili, December 7, 2025.)

Even the greatest minds can’t yet agree with the role of time in the universe. In a February 2024 podcast for Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, distinguished professor in the Department of Mathematics, Cornell University, stated: “All of us are aware of the passing of time. We’ve felt it in the changing of the seasons, the rhythms of song and dance, our kids growing up and getting older. Like it or not, time is a fundamental part of life. And over the millennia, scientists have generally regarded time as a one-dimensional thing, an arrow that keeps moving forward, never backward. But the closer we look at time, the more complicated and mysterious it gets. Scientists today are divided over whether time, or our experience of it at least, is real or illusory. Perhaps we’re not really moving through time. Perhaps the present, past and future are all equally real.”

Regardless of the complexities of understanding the nature of time through science and mathematics, the world conducts its business based on easy-to-understand measurements of time with watches, clocks, calendars, and schedules. We manage our lives the same way. For us, “time marches on” in the repetition of night and day, of the weeks that go by and come again, and the months passing and then coming again as a new year begins. We realize the concept of past, present, and future. As one year ends and becomes the past, the new year welcomes in the present and the future. Thus, we are given, once again, a time “to start over” with renewed hope, trust, and perhaps a commitment to ourselves to live each day and month to our fullest potential.

By a “certain” age, most of us understand that time is a gift. Time is the gift that allows us to live life with purpose. We understand this, but don't always treat time as a magnificent, treasured gift. We forget that this gift has a limit that is best not squandered. January offers a reminder to us. Let us each use our remaining allotted time with respect, kindness, and purpose for ourselves, our families and loved ones, our friends, our communities, our country, our Earth, and our universe.