Lauren+H's+Op-Ed+Article

Time is omnipresent. It is not ephemeral, it is not fleeting, and it is not fading. Time is a constant—moving at a slow, steady, monotonous pace. No excitement or change, just always there, always droning away the days and nights. But does time **really** exist? I mean, isn’t it just a convenient measure of where the sun & moon are in the sky? Time hasn’t always been in existence; I’m pretty sure dinosaurs didn’t methodically plan when they were going to hunt, eat, sleep, and wake down to the last second like us humans do. Did humans invent time…or discover it? “Time doesn’t exist, clocks do”. Is this true?

We inherently have a biological clock that is set for 23 hour cycles, but early Neanderthals never realized this phenomenon. But, as the centuries progress, and the centuries move on, and the years add up, and the month multiply and the days go by, and the hours dwindle away—ugh! Make it stop! Just…make it stop. Yet, time will never stop, or slow, or accelerate faster. Time is a ruthless dictator. It controls your age, it controls your schedule, it controls your life. Try getting away from time. You can’t. You simply cannot get away from time. A couple minutes of your life, an hour or two here and there, years, and decades upon decades will all be sucked into the black hole of the past; never to be experienced again except for the constantly morphing memories stored in your brain. The earth is around 5 billion years old. 5 billion! And humans have been on earth for only 200,000 years. That's only .004% of the time earth has been around. And then there's each individual life. Life expectancy is about 80 years old in the United States—if you're lucky. Life is ridiculously short, and the frustrating thing is that I haven't done anything with my life yet; at least anything worthwhile and memorable. Yes, I've gone to school; yes, I play a sport; yes, I've volunteered; but, no, I haven't done anything significant. You read stories all the time of someone saving a life or travelling around the globe in a sailboat solo, or someone having an idea that changes the world completely, or a story about those people who are just so inspirational that you want to be them. But I'm just one person, in the huge world, who's most likely going to die without doing a single damn thing that substantially important. I want to do something important! I want to cure cancer and AIDS, get rid of poverty and corruption, create world peace and happiness, I want to do everything! But, alas, there's not enough time. And I can't do everything. But maybe I can do something. Maybe.

The universe has been here for forever. That’s pretty hard to wrap your head around. **Forever**. There is no beginning or end. Time is everlasting. Time. Time. Time. Time. What a frustrating concept. It makes my head hurt