Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

T.S. Elliot, Burnt Norton

It’s a Sunday morning, and after hours of laboriously avoiding the schoolwork I should have completed three days ago, I procrastinate further by going on YouTube and watch videos. After scrolling for some time,  I click on a video titled: Banach–Tarski paradox by the YouTuber, VSauce and my life is forever changed.

The beginning of the video explains that our common conception of infinity fails to articulate that there are different sizes of infinities. Different sizes of infinities. Different sizes of infinities? I didn’t get it either, until he diagrammed it. First, he drew countable numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …, these numbers are also known as whole numbers because one can count between each integer in a finite amount of time. Second, he drew a fraction between each whole number to demonstrate how irrational numbers disrupt the ability to count between one precise element to another. In other words, a person can count between one to two, but what succeeds the irrational number 0.333333… if the irrational number conceptually is infinite. Thus, what sequence is longer, the countable sequence of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… or the sequence that cannot even get past 0.11111….? Infinity, therefore, has different sizes.

After watching this video my thoughts went into overload examining all of the ways that my conception of numbers have been skewed. Then I began to think about time and how my understanding or perception of time have been skewed. During this moment of contemplation, the excerpt from T.S. Elliot’s, Burnt Norton was resurrected from the depths of my mind.

It appears to me that our human brains are always trying to systematically categorize and simplify our observations of the known world, but fail to represent the complexity and indescribable nature of things. I think this is why I have always been an admirer of the arts. James Joyce, Marcel Proust Italio Svevo are all among my favorite authors for they seek to challenge our common descriptions or perceptions of our reality. The excerpt I chose is particularly important, for it reinforced this notion that what I perceive time to be is nothing more than an illusion. The events that occurred to me at five are no more true or false than the moment I presently exist in. Presently I am writing this piece, and a second from now I will still be writing. But will this moment just disappear in a year from now, will it only live in my memory? Or will this moment remain alive a year from now in another plane in time?

Time is a scary concept, primarily because it is one of those concepts that are not easily simplified. Time is a difficult concept to understand. But I believe the purpose of Elliot’s poem is to express that if time is ever existent, than one should make each and every single moment count. Perhaps time is as paradoxical as the concept of different sizes of infinity. This is precisely why one should cherish each moment they have, and not harp on any moment too long.

-Justine Mekonen