Scrolling Through Time:The Fractured Clock of Modern Life
We measure time as if it belongs to us. Hours, minutes, seconds — Sliced, diced, and numbered, tucked neatly into calendars and clocks. Yet time has never bowed to our control. It stretches, bends, slows, and accelerates depending on where we stand, how we move, and what we choose to notice. The Autumnal Equinox arrives as a reminder of this: a fleeting moment of balance in a world that rarely feels balanced at all.
“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change.”
Time.. what a wondrously marvelous fundamental aspect of the universe, gliding along hand-in-hand with space in a dance humans have been trying to name since the first shadows stretched across those ancient sundials. Sure, we learned to measure it — years, months, days, nanoseconds, and now even smaller — but measuring isn’t the same as mastering.
The truth is, time is still a vast mystery we live inside, not a possession we hold or can obtain.
The Equinox is our annual proof of balance: equal day, equal night, nearly everywhere across the globe. This balance doesn’t just touch the sky, it reaches into us as well. Our bodies sense the shift, cooler air, shorter light, new rhythms of sleep, mood and energy. Spiritually, many cultures see this as harvest season, not only of crops, but of the inner harvest: reflection, introspection, grounding, preparation. A reminder that we too are seasonal creatures.
And yet, how often do we notice?
We watch clocks tick down to the end of the workday. We scroll, swipe, refresh. We chase the next headline, viral video, or digital outrage. Within moments, our attention shifts again: from a tragedy on one side of the globe to a viral dance video on the other.
Humans were never meant to hold this much happening in their heads at once. The over-consumption of information has warped our relationship with ourselves, society, and time itself.
A Gentle Reminder from Einstein
Einstein’s theory of relativity is often wrapped in intimidating equations, but at its heart, it tells us something beautifully human: the way we experience time depends on where we stand and how we move. There is no single, universal tick of the clock. Time flows differently for the runner than the observer, for the traveler than for the one at home.
Imagine boarding a rocket shop that soars close to the speed of light. On your wrist, a watch ticks steadily, second after second, feeling utterly normal. Yet, when you return to Earth, you’d find that far more time has passed here than on your shop. Your friends and family would be older; their clocks would have ticked faster than yours. This is time dilation, not science fiction, but a reality proven by experiments with atomic clocks flown on jets.
The everyday takeaway? Time isn’t absolute. It bends with perspective. Just like two people can see the same sunset and walk away with entirely different feelings, so too does time flow differently depending on the frame of reference.
In the digital age, we live inside a kind of relativity all our own. Our attention is constantly pulled between multiple frames of reference — the intimate space of our personal lives, the relentless cascade of global news, the micro-dramas of social feeds. Each one moves at its own rhythm, demanding our focus, bending our sense of how fast or flow a day feels.
Spend an hour scrolling and it evaporates in a blink. Wait five minutes in silence and it drags into eternity. Time is slippery. Perspective is everything.
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”
This brings us to entropy — the so-called “arrow of time.” Entropy, in the language of physics, is the tendency for energy to spread out, for order to dissolve into disorder. Ice melts into water. Buildings crumble into dust. Stars burn out into silence. Life itself moves along this path of increasing disorder.
The second law of thermodynamics tells us entropy always increases. It is why time moves forward and never back. A shattered glass won’t leap back into your hand. We live in a universe where the arrow always points ahead, never in reverse.
And yet, look at how we treat our days. We consume more stories, more images, more fragments of lives in one week than our ancestors might have encountered in their entire lifetime. Our attention scatters across countless timelines, dissolving into a kind of mental entropy. Just as the universe tends toward disorder, our minds do too… if we allow them.
The world has always been full of simultaneous events. Wars, births, deaths, love stores, miracles, and tragedies have always unfolded together, in their own balancing act. The difference is that in the past, we only carried the weight of the few we could witness. Today, we carry hundreds, even thousands, every time we pick up our phones. It is no wonder our sense of time feels fractures, stretched thin across too many reference frams and timelines.
Entropy in physics may be inevitable. But entropy in our attention? That is where choices live. We can either let our energy scatter into endless distraction, or we can gather it, direct it, cultivate it.
The Autumnal Equinox, then, is more than a celestial event. It is an invitation. A reminder that balance, however fleeting it may be, is possible. That in the great disorder of the universe, there are still moments of symmetry, order, and alignment.
Just as the farmers once brought in their harvest, we too can harvest what matters most from oir own lives — our time, our energy, our attention. This is not a season of planting or frantic growth. It is a season of gathering, of slowing down, of honoring what has ripened. Even time itself reminds us the days are shorter, the pace eases, the air cools.
Nature herself shows us how to prepare for the stillness that's to come.
We cannot stop the flood of information. We cannot prevent cruel acts or death’s fate. We cannot slow the relentless tick of entropy. But we can step outside, notice the angle of the sun, feel the crispness of the air, the dirt beneath our feet, and that that moment be enough. For a breath. For a heartbeat. For a moment, balance is possible.
“Try to accept the changing seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the changing seasons that pass over your fields.”
Think of the year like a garden. Spring is planting. Summer is growth. Autumn is harvest. Winter is rest. The Equinox stands at the edge of Summer and Fall, whispering ever so gently: This is not a planting season. This is not a season of endless growth. This is the season to gather, to slow down, to prepare for rest.
Our time is not infinite, and the world will never stop overflowing with news, content, and distractions. But like a farmer at harvest, we too can choose what to gather and what to leave in the fields. We can’t hold it all and we’re by no means meant to.
What matters is that we notice. That we choose carefully. That we step into balance when we can, even as briefly as it may be, and remember above all else: Time is relative, attention has a limit, and presence is the richest harvest of all.
Speaking of time, thank you all for taking the time to read what I have to say! It is ever so appreciated and never goes unnoticed.
Until next time,
Guthrie
Ps. If you’re interested to venture on, and add to your collection of knowledge, you’ll find this helpful along the way:
