What Is The Relationship Between Human Beings And Time?

Human beings are some of the most complex organisms on the planet and were the first sentient species to inhabit the Earth. Humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years, so, at this point, we are pretty familiar with the concept of time. Essentially, time is a tool to measure the passing of existence. Time has helped us to measure ages, holidays, and seasons, to name a few, but what exactly is a human’s relationship to time? Human beings' relationship to time is one of similarity, limits and inevitability.

The human life is one with four stages: birth/childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age/death. Similarly, time has four stages over the course of one year: spring, summer, fall and winter. Spring is comparable to birth and youth, as spring brings about newborn animals and growing plants. Summer represents adolescence because of it’s warm and freeing weather, reminiscent of young adults’ lives. Fall is of likeness to adulthood; age increases, along with the chill in the air representing death’s inevitability (more on that later). Lastly, winter represents old age and death. Hardly any plants are living anymore and the cold air is, again, similar to death. This comparison is shown in William Shakespeare’s Sonnet #73, where Shakespeare writes, “When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang” (Sonnet 73, line 2), which is comparable with the stage of life of the author at the time (later adulthood).

Shakespeare wrote many sonnets about time, one of which is Sonnet #60, which is about the short time that humans have on Earth. William states, “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, / So do our minutes hasten to their end.” (Sonnet 60, lines 1 and 2). This quotation demonstrates how little time we have to do everything that we would like to do. There is a YouTube channel that also takes this idea seriously, “Unus Annus”, Latin for “One Year”. Two young men, Mark Fischbach and Ethan Nestor, made a YouTube channel that is centered around one philosophical idea: that our time on this planet is short, so we should live life while we can. They have set their YouTube channel to delete after one year of uploads, and will not allow any re-uploads, forcing us to accept the inevitability of death, of their channel and of humanity. One year isn’t a very long amount of time, so we are asked by Fischbach and Nestor to cherish the videos on the channel while we still can.

This YouTube channel, Unus Annus, has a Latin title as well as a Latin motto, “Memento mori”, translating to “Remember you must die”. The inevitability of death is a scary topic to think about for some, but death is inescapable. Not only is death unavoidable, the future is also a fixed point in time, before it even technically exists. Macbeth, the title character of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth was told by 3 witches that he would become King of Scotland. This caused Macbeth to kill the current king and his good friend, King Duncan, in impatient, cold blood. After he was king, he realised that Banquo, one of his best friends, could possibly betray him by placing his own children on the occupied throne, so he had Banquo killed (Banquo’s son escaped). Macbeth also learned from the witches that, “...for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” (Act IV, scene i, line 80) and “Beware Macduff” (Act IV, scene i, line 71). From hearing these prophecies, he had Macduff’s family murdered and thought that no man could ever hurt him. What Macbeth failed to realise, though, was that Macduff was technically not “of woman born”, for he was “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped” (Act V, scene viii, lines 15 and 16). Macbeth should never have tried to toy with fate and escape death; hasn’t he heard that Blue Oyster Cult song, Don’t Fear The Reaper?

There are two sides to every story. The counterclaim for the thesis statement above may be, “Well, scientists are saying that they can stop death in the near future”. While they may try, there is no escaping death. Science can elongate life as much as the scientists want, but every living thing has to die. If people stayed alive like Methuselah, who lived to “...a total of 969 years...” (Genesis 5:27, NIV), they would decay while alive. A person that old probably wouldn’t be able to think on their own. It’s better to just die when your time comes, rather than suffer for so long.

To make a long essay short (too late), time plays an important role in the lives of the average human being. Every person on Earth relies on time to keep up with the continuation of existence, no matter how much they would like to control it. Death is imminent, so don’t try to become immortal, as you may find it unamusing and even torturous.