Derrick Smith
English 373
December 6, 2004
Project 4: Research Based Service-Learning Project
Time Management: Putting Time on Your Side
Time is life. It is irreversible and irreplaceable. To waste ones time is to waste ones life,
but mastery of time usage is mastery of life and making the most of it. Einstein once said,
“There is no absolute relation in time between two events, but there is an absolute relation
between space and time” (Sharp 1). Time is a mystery. It cannot be tied down by definition
or confined inside a formula. Like gravity, it is a phenomenon that we can experience but
cannot understand. We are aware of the ageing of our bodies, of the effects of the
movements of our planet, and of the ticking of the clock. We learn a little about what we
call the past and we know that change is built into our lives. But neither philosophers nor
scientists have been able to analyze and explain all of the meaning of time. Not only have
they failed to provide easy explanations, but their efforts sometimes seem to have made
mystery more mysterious and to have shown us that our lack of understanding was even
greater than we supposed.
Some philosophers argue that the passage of time is an important metaphysical fact, but
one that can only be grasped by non-rational intuition. Others tell us that the flow of time
is an illusion and that the future can no more be changed than the past. Some believe that
future events come into existence as the present; the future becomes the actual
