Over the weekend, I read a very interesting book that was a gift from a colleague of mine a while back and I finally got around to reading it. Despite the title, it is not at all scientific. It’s poetic, and a little philosophical in that the author plays with the different human postures towards conceiving of time.
My favorite chapter of the (short) book relates to time being sticky. Here’s an excerpt:
“A spinster sees the face of the young man who loved her in the mirror of her bedroom, on the ceiling of the bakery, on the surface of the lake, in the sky.
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.”
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
Labels: books