What is time, really? Is it the slow wheel of the seasons, turning winter into spring each year as our ancestors watched the sky? Is it the steady beat of a heart and the rise and fall of the chest as we breathe each second? Or is it the digital numbers flickering on our screens, calendars full of appointments, alarms and reminders marching us through tightly scheduled days? Time weaves through every aspect of human life – biological, cultural, personal – yet our perception of time is remarkably fluid and context-dependent. We live by rhythms inherited from the Earth, even as our minds can stretch or compress moments in ways that defy any clock. In this chapter, we will explore how humans sense and measure time on levels ranging from the cellular to the civilizational. And then we will venture into speculation: how might our perception of time change if one day we leave this planet’s bounds and travel among the stars, where relativity twists time itself? In imagining such a future, we confront profound questions. For tens of thousands of years, humanity’s experience of time has been anchored by the rotation of our Earth and the limits of our short lifespans. How will we orient ourselves if those anchors shift – if a person can age only months while decades pass elsewhere, as in the science fiction of The Forever War? Will our minds and cultures evolve new ways to grasp reality when “time is perceived so differently than it is in the modern era”? Let us begin, as all stories must, with the present and the past – with time as we know it.
Biological Time
Inside each of us, nature’s clock is ticking. Human beings (like most living creatures) possess internal biological rhythms that attune us to the cycle of night and day. The most prominent is the circadian rhythm, a roughly 24-hour cycle in our physiology and behavior. This innate clock, governed by a tiny region in the brain’s hypothalamus, is calibrated by environmental cues – primarily the sunrise and sunset. For untold millennia, our ancestors rose with the dawn’s light, hunted or farmed by day, and sought shelter and sleep by night. The pattern of light and darkness set the tempo of human life. Even now, in our electrified cities, our bodies secretly continue to follow the sun. Hormones like melatonin rise after dark to make us sleepy, and cortisol spikes in the morning to wake us. Most people’s body temperature dips at night and peaks in late afternoon, mirroring the day’s cycle. This alignment with the Earth’s 24-hour rotation is so deep that when removed from external cues (say, in a bunker with no clocks or daylight), humans still maintain a cycle of roughly 24 to 25 hours – the clock within keeps ticking, though it may drift slightly. In fact, experiments have shown the human natural day might be just a tad longer than 24 hours, which incidentally aligns well with Mars’ day of 24 hours 39 minutes (a curious hint that we might adapt decently on Mars). Our sense of a “daily routine” is fundamentally biological.
Beyond the daily rhythm, other biological timescales shape our perception. The heartbeat is a built-in metronome; at rest, roughly 60–80 beats per minute form an ever-present ticking in our veins. Some researchers suggest that our subjective sense of a second might be linked to the heartbeat or breathing rate. When afraid or exercising, as the heart races, time can seem to slow down – a phenomenon often reported in emergencies. Perhaps an accelerated heart and pumping adrenaline make each moment feel fuller, stretching seconds as the brain processes more information than usual. Conversely, in calm states when the heart beats slowly and regularly, time can slip by unnoticed. There is also the lifespan of our cells and bodies: childhood, puberty, adulthood, old age – each a chapter with its own pace. Children often experience time as expansive and slow (“Are we there yet?” feels endless) because each year is a large fraction of their life and their brain is rapidly soaking in new experiences. Elders, by contrast, may feel years fly by faster and faster, as each year is a small sliver of a long life and the routines of adulthood create fewer stark memories to mark time’s passage. This acceleration of perceived time with age is nearly universal, a poignant reminder that perception of duration is subjective. The clock on the wall may be objective, but the clock in the mind can speed up or slow down depending on how we’re wired and what we’re doing.
Cultural Time
Human perception of time is not only biological – it is profoundly shaped by culture and context. Every society teaches its members how to think about time, how to mark it and value it. One primary way is through calendars and seasonal cycles. For ancient agrarian cultures, time was inherently cyclical. The year was experienced as a great circle: planting in spring, growing in summer, harvesting in autumn, surviving in winter, and round again. Festivals and rituals reinforced this cycle – nearly every culture has celebrations tied to solstices, equinoxes, and harvests, aligning human life with the turning of the Earth’s orbit around the sun. For example, ancient peoples from the Sumerians to the Maya developed calendars by observing celestial bodies, explicitly to predict seasonal change and when to sow crops. “Celestial bodies — the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars — have provided us a reference for measuring the passage of time throughout our existence,” notes one historical account. Indeed, a day was one rotation of Earth (sunrise to sunrise), a month roughly one cycle of the moon’s phases, a year one journey around the sun (marked by the return of seasons). These natural cycles gave an implicit structure to time: time was something that comes back. Last summer’s time will come again next summer; the harsh winter will be followed by spring rebirth. Many early societies therefore saw time as a repeating circle rather than an arrow. In Hindu tradition, for instance, time is an endless wheel of creation and destruction (yugas). Indigenous peoples often timed their activities by natural signs (the blooming of certain flowers, the migration of animals) rather than abstract dates – a very contextual, environment-linked sense of time.
Not all cultures emphasize cyclical time equally. The rise of linear history-based religions (like Judaism, Christianity, Islam) introduced more of a linear time concept – a progression from a beginning (Creation) towards an end or ultimate goal. In medieval Christian Europe, time was still largely cyclical in everyday life (the liturgical year, the farming year), yet the overarching worldview was linear (one life, one chance for salvation). Today, Western cultures strongly embody linear time: we talk about “time running out,” being “on the clock,” and see life as a line from birth to death with milestones along the way. Western languages often describe time as a resource – spent, saved, wasted – reflecting a mindset that time is finite and must be managed. In contrast, many non-Western cultures traditionally view time as more abundant, renewing, or flexible. In parts of Africa or Latin America, there is the saying “Westerners have the watches, but we have the time,” implying a less rigid, more event-driven approach. Anthropologists classify cultures as monochronic or polychronic in their time perception. Monochronic societies (many Western and East Asian contexts) like to do one thing at a time, keep strict schedules, and value punctuality – time is segmented and appointments are sacred. Polychronic societies (common in parts of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America) are more comfortable doing multiple things at once, and schedules are subordinate to relationships and unfolding events. In a polychronic setting, a meeting may start late and have a fluid agenda, because attending to a family matter or greeting an unexpected visitor is seen as equally important as the clock-time. Neither approach is right or wrong – each is a cultural adaptation. But it shows that even something as basic as what it means to be “on time” is a cultural construct. Your internal feeling of impatience or relaxation in waiting for someone largely depends on what your culture taught you to expect from time.
Culture also influences time orientation – whether people focus on the past, present, or future. For example, societies with ancient continuous histories (China, for one) tend to revere the past, viewing it as a guide, whereas younger societies (like the United States) often prize future possibilities and progress. This orientation changes how time is perceived: in a past-oriented culture, there may be a stronger sense of continuity and patience, while in a future-oriented one, time might feel like a rushing arrow carrying you forward, urging you to prepare and plan. Even metaphors of time vary: English speakers usually visualize time on a linear path (we look ahead to the future, behind at the past). Some languages, however, conceive it vertically or cyclically. In Aymara (an Andean language), the word for past is associated with “in front” (because the past is known, visible) and future with “behind” (unseen, coming from behind). These subtle differences hint that how we feel time passing – whether we welcome it or fear it, whether we feel rushed or find it ample – is partially conditioned by cultural worldview.
Psychological Time
Even within one individual, in one day, time perception can stretch like taffy or snap like a rubber band. We’ve all noticed how context and activity affect the flow of time in our minds. “Time flies when you’re having fun,” the adage goes – and it’s true that engaging activities seem to make hours evaporate. When you are deeply absorbed in an enjoyable task or in flow, you scarcely notice the clock. In contrast, a boring or painful experience (sitting through a dull lecture or waiting in a dentist’s office) can make minutes feel interminable. Neuroscience has some insights here: when the brain is flooded with input or emotion, it forms more memories of that period, so looking back it appears longer. Conversely, routine or unremarkable times leave fewer memory traces, so in hindsight they seem brief. This is why childhood summers, filled with novel adventures, loom so large in memory, whereas a decade of adult commutes and office work can blur by in retrospect. Intense emotional states also warp time. In fear or crisis, many people report a slow-motion effect – as if the world pauses (likely due to adrenaline heightening our awareness, effectively making the internal clock tick faster and capturing more snapshots per objective second). In contrast, positive immersion can truncate perception – hours spent at a lively gathering might feel like mere moments because the brain isn’t checking the time; it’s basking in the experience.
Modern technology and pace of life have introduced new contextual twists. In the digital age, we often experience a strange duality: everything moves faster (instant communication, rapid news cycles), yet because we are constantly stimulated, we may feel the years rushing by without notice. Psychologists note that being constantly busy can make time feel accelerated – we don’t pause to mark the moments. On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic taught many how elastic time is: lockdown days filled with repetitive tedium felt extremely slow in the moment, yet looking back, those months might seem like a blur, as if time was lost. This is a reminder that psychological time isn’t uniform; it depends on change and significance. As one researcher quipped, “the days were slow but the year was fast” – monotony drags, but a lack of distinct memories makes large blocks of time seem to have vanished. Our internal clock can even be tricked in smaller ways: for instance, counting “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi” is a learned method to approximate seconds, but under stress you might count faster without realizing. Athletes and performers often develop a refined sense of timing; a musician can feel a precise tempo, a baseball player can sense the milliseconds to hit a fastball. Training and attention can therefore sharpen or alter how we parse time.
This pliability of human time perception indicates that as our context changes, so too might our very feeling of duration and tempo. And no context change could be more profound than leaving the environment that forged our rhythms – venturing off Earth, beyond the familiar cycle of sun and seasons.
The Future: Spacefaring and Relativistic Time – Evolving Toward a New Temporal Reality
Imagine a future where humankind travels routinely through space, perhaps establishing colonies on other planets or journeying to distant stars. This future would upend many of the cues and anchors that have grounded our sense of time. Consider a human settlement on Mars: the Martian day (often called a sol) is about 24 hours and 40 minutes long. It’s just slightly longer than Earth’s day, and experiments suggest our circadian clock could adjust with minor difficulty (astronauts have already conducted “Mars day” schedules in simulations). But Mars’ year is almost twice as long as Earth’s (~687 Earth days). The rhythm of seasons on Mars is different – you’d live through about 24 months in a Martian year. How would that affect human psychology and culture? Martian colonists might celebrate birthdays that come less frequently (a 30-year-old Earthling would be only 16 Mars-years old). Would they still use Earth’s calendar out of legacy, or develop a new Martian calendar? Already, scientists have devised Mars calendars dividing the longer year, and there’s discussion of adjusting work schedules to Mars’ slightly longer day (perhaps a 25-hour cycle with more sleep). Over generations, Martians may come to feel a Martian year as “normal” – their children growing up with different stars overhead and a different seasonal cadence. Their biology might subtly shift too: perhaps slightly longer circadian periods, different hormonal cycles if gravity and day-length differ. This is still within the realm of solar timekeeping, however – the sun still rises and sets, anchoring life.
Now push further: imagine voyages outside the solar system, where travelers spend long periods in starships far from any natural day-night cycle. In deep space, “day” might be defined purely by the ship’s artificial lights – a 24-hour cycle is likely to be maintained on board to keep circadian rhythms healthy. (Even on the International Space Station, astronauts see 16 sunrises a day as they orbit Earth, but they adhere to a 24-hour schedule by convention.) However, the psychological effect of not having a true sky could alter one’s sense of time. Some speculate that without external cues, time could become more abstract to spacefarers – they might rely entirely on clocks and mission timers, essentially living by metronomic time. Others suggest that on a long voyage, the crew might experience a kind of time dilation of the mind: boredom and confinement could make the trip subjectively interminable, unless countered by activities (e.g., multi-year missions would necessitate recreation, work, and variation to prevent every day from feeling the same). We may need new rituals or milestones to mark time’s passage when usual ones (like seasonal holidays tied to Earth’s orbit) are absent. Perhaps ships will celebrate “orbital day” every 365 days to remember Earth’s calendar, even as they traverse interstellar space.
All these adjustments, though challenging, still assume classical time. But Einstein’s universe has a surprise for future spacefaring humans: relativistic time dilation. According to special relativity, if one travels at speeds close to light, time literally passes more slowly for the traveler relative to those who stay behind. This is not just perception – it’s physical reality, confirmed by experiments with fast-moving clocks. The famous “twin paradox” illustrates it: one twin rockets off at near-light-speed, the other remains on Earth; when the traveler twin returns, they will be younger than their Earth-bound sibling. In effect, the space traveler leaps into Earth’s future. Joe Haldeman’s science fiction novel The Forever War explored this idea poignantly. Soldiers in that story fight an interstellar war, making relativistic jumps that cause “years and decades [to pass] back home while they experience days and weeks” in transit. When they finally return to Earth, they find a society transformed beyond recognition – their loved ones aged or gone, languages changed, new technologies and norms foreign to them. Haldeman’s soldiers are disoriented and alienated by time as much as by war. The novel’s scenario is fictional but grounded in real physics, and it poses questions that future explorers might truly face. How do you cope with the knowledge that if you travel to another star and back at high speed, you might come home to a world that has moved on by centuries? Your personal time and cultural time would desynchronize completely.
If humanity becomes capable of near-light travel, even if only for some individuals, we could see a strange stratification of time perception between those who voyage and those who stay. The voyagers would experience perhaps normal lifespans in subjective terms – say, they live 80 years and feel it as 80 years – but if much of that time is at relativistic speed, entire eras might pass for planetside humanity in those 80 years. In essence, travelers become time travelers to the future (though not to the past). This raises profound cultural and psychological issues. A person might leave on a journey with everyone they know alive, and return finding themselves effectively a relic, a living fossil in a future society. The anchor of human lifespan as a measure (“a generation,” “a lifetime”) would lose its universality. Traditionally, we orient history by human lives: grandparents to parents to children form a chain. Relativistic travel could break that chain – one could potentially outlive one’s great-great-grandchildren simply by skipping over intermediate years. How would that change one’s sense of identity and belonging?
We can speculate on some possibilities. Societies might establish policies or customs for reintegrating such travelers – perhaps analogous to how we treat people waking from long comas or cryogenic sleep in sci-fi. There could be “time dilation insurance” of a sort: programs to brief returnees on the years they missed, or even immersive simulations to catch them up on cultural changes gradually. Travelers themselves may need strong psychological resilience, knowing that their journey is effectively one-way in time. Some might choose to sever ties, acknowledging that everyone they knew will be gone. Others might form tight-knit communities of fellow travelers who all share the same frame of reference (for instance, a crew that leaves and returns together essentially becomes each other’s family, unchanged while the outside world ages).
Human perception of time in such scenarios would surely evolve. We might develop a dual consciousness: understanding relative time vs. absolute time. For example, a starship pilot might say, “I experienced 5 years on this mission, but 50 years passed on Earth.” They would have to hold both facts in mind. Perhaps new language will emerge – different words for one’s subjective elapsed time versus reference time. Science fiction often glosses over that the travelers feel normal time on board (they are not in stasis, unless using hibernation technology; they live those years normally). It’s the comparison that shocks. This could lead to a philosophical shift: time might be seen not as a single universal flow, but as a personal property. In relativity, each observer has their own time. People on Earth, on Mars, and on a fast-moving ship all have slightly different clocks. In everyday life now, we don’t notice because speeds are too low to matter. But at star-travel scales, it becomes evident. Future humans may routinely ask “Which frame of time?” the way we now ask “Which time zone?” Already, astronauts on the ISS experience a tiny bit of relativistic time dilation (just milliseconds), effectively aging microseconds less than us on Earth. If one day we had a “near-lightspeed express” transport, passengers might age a little less than those on sub-light transports. This could even become a weird form of one-way time tourism – people might take relativistic trips not only to reach distant places but to see the future. (Physicist Stephen Hawking once mused that a sufficiently advanced civilization might use fast rockets as time machines to skip ahead).
Leaving relativity aside, even widespread space colonization within normal speeds would alter time perception culturally. Suppose humans live on many planets, each with its own rotation and orbit. Our calendar, tied to Earth’s year and months, might become less relevant. We might keep a standard (perhaps based on atomic seconds) for communication and science, but local communities might adapt to their local sky. A person born on a moon of Jupiter, with perhaps 42-hour days and different year length, will grow up with a different feel for the length of an “hour” of free time or a “year” in life. Coordination across planets may require some universal timekeeping (similar to how we use Greenwich Mean Time or Universal Time today for global events). Possibly a new universal unit – maybe the “galactic second” or a time unit based on fundamental constants – would be adopted to transcend any one planet’s cycle.
The farther we push into extreme environments, the more contextual cues fall away. In the void of interstellar space, there are no seasons, no day/night – only the heartbeat of the ship and the routines onboard mark time. In the far future, if humans are in deep hibernation for long journeys, they might not experience those years at all, essentially jumping instantaneously from their perspective. How would that alter one’s relationship with time? If you go to sleep and wake 100 years later on another world (cryonics or hibernation), you personally haven’t felt that time, which might be easier in one sense (no boredom) but culturally you’ve leapt ahead. Some people might become effectively immortal in experience by serially hibernating – living only portions of centuries. Would they feel estranged from normal humans who live continuously? Possibly.
All these scenarios challenge the core notion that time is something steady and shared. We may need to develop what one might call “temporal literacy” – an ability to understand and accept different flows of time. Today, we already practice a mild form of this: we know that when it’s Tuesday in Los Angeles, it’s already Wednesday in Tokyo. We juggle multiple time zones. We even humorously speak of “island time” or “banker’s hours” to denote different paces. In a multi-world civilization, one may regularly think: My friend on Mars celebrates New Year according to Mars’s calendar, which doesn’t sync with mine. Our technology might handle it (digital calendars converting times), but psychologically we’ll adapt by broadening our concept of “now.”
Perhaps we will evolve to be more patient and long-viewed. If journeys and projects can span decades or centuries (with participants moving in and out via time dilation), society may place more emphasis on continuity beyond individual lifetimes. We might measure progress not in years but in epochs. Conversely, individuals who can hop through time might gain a unique perspective, almost like prophets out of their era. They may become key links in the chain of history, carrying knowledge and values across what would normally be generations.
Let’s not underestimate biology though – we are still mortal and finite in how we experience time moment to moment. Even a spacefarer deals with the boredom of a long trip in their frame. Humans might incorporate new technology to cope: maybe neural implants that can slow one’s subjective sense of time (making long waits feel shorter) or conversely allow one to savor moments by perceiving more frames per second, so to speak. If we become a species scattered across relativistic distances, possibly even our brains or senses could adapt, but that drifts into the speculative realm of transhumanism.
One thing is certain: our idea of “time = clocks and calendars” will be humbled. Einstein’s legacy tells us time is not absolute; future life might make that an everyday truth, not just a theory. As astrophysicist Paul Sutter put it, we will truly learn “how to make sense of a world in which time is relative”. Different observers literally experience different durations between events. We will have to let go of the notion that there is a single universal now that we all share across space. Instead, “now” becomes local. Philosophically, this is profound: it may change how we think of simultaneity, causality, even identity (if twins have vastly different ages due to travel, age becomes a less useful measure of anything).
In pondering such a future, science fiction like The Forever War provides a cautionary tale: those leaps in time fractured the protagonist’s sense of home. If large portions of humanity ever live off-world or on ships, we must ask, what will “home” mean? Possibly time itself becomes part of our identity – Earthlings, Martians, and spacefarers might each have their own temporal culture. We could even envision political issues: might there be “time rights”? For example, a traveler who comes back might feel entitled to special support, as they sacrificed aging alongside everyone else. Or conversely, might people resent that some folks can effectively outrun time and peek into the future? Societal norms and laws will grapple with such questions.
Finally, consider evolution in the biological sense: Over very long timescales, if humans live in varied time environments, could natural selection favor those with certain temporal adaptability? Perhaps individuals whose circadian rhythms are flexible, or who can handle isolation and monotony without psychological break, will thrive in space and pass on genes accordingly. In a distant future, there might even be divergence: one branch of humanity that lives on planetary surfaces and another that roams in generation ships or near-light vessels. Their lifestyles could shape their brains and bodies in different ways, including time perception. One might imagine “homo temporalis,” a hypothetical offshoot adept at handling time dilation intuitively – though this remains science fiction speculation.
Standing here in the modern era, we still orient ourselves by familiar markers: the changing seasons, the yearly calendar, the ticking clock, and the lifespan milestones (birth, school, marriage, retirement, death) that have structured human life for ages. We know when to plant crops because winter yielded to spring. We celebrate New Year’s after Earth makes one more loop around the sun. We plan futures on the scale of our expected decades of life; we save for retirement around 60s or 70s because that’s our known horizon. Our entire economic and social fabric quietly assumes a certain consistency of human time experience. But if the context shifts – if one day a person could, say, experience only 6 months of aging while 10 years pass for society – how do we plan then? Do we still say “see you next year,” or do we have to specify “your next year or mine?” It sounds fantastical, but it might become a real consideration for spacefaring civilizations.
Perhaps the most important thing we will gain is perspective. Already, looking at Earth from orbit gave astronauts the famous “overview effect,” altering their sense of time and humanity – seeing our planet small and fragile made them think more about long-term global time (like climate and civilization’s future). If we travel farther, maybe our sense of time will expand in tandem with space. We might come to measure history in millennia as casually as we now do in years. If relativistic travel is common, there may be individuals whose personal memories span many centuries (by skipping through them), making them living historians. Will we become more detached from the urgency of the now, or more appreciative of moments knowing they are relative? It’s hard to know.
Ultimately, the core of human time perception – how we orient ourselves, biologically and emotionally – will have to remain flexible and adaptive. We have always found ways to make sense of time’s passage: through stories, traditions, and science. The scenario of widespread time dilation forces a truly novel orientation. It invites almost spiritual questions: If one leaves everything behind temporally, what anchors the self? If one can’t rely on seasons or one’s own aging to mark time, perhaps the focus turns inward – to experiences, relationships with those present, or to missions that transcend time (like scientific or artistic pursuits that carry meaning regardless of when you end up).
We can foresee that humans will develop new mental frameworks. Maybe we will borrow from the timelessness experienced in meditation or in long sea voyages of old. For example, on a centuries-long ship journey (even if subjective time is less), culture on board might develop its own micro-time, like generational storytelling to link with origin and destination.
In referencing The Forever War, one is struck by the question it poses: if war (or life) is stretched over relativistic time, do values and love persist, or do they break? Haldeman suggested that despite time gulfs, some human constants (like love between the protagonist and his partner) could survive by synchronizing their travels. Future humans might similarly choose to synchronize – families may choose to all travel together to remain in the same timeframe. Or perhaps people will become more accustomed to asynchronous relationships (imagine messaging a friend knowing they will receive it decades later their time, but maybe days in yours).
As we conclude this exploration, we stand at the threshold of possibilities. From the biological ticks in our cells to the grand leaps of relativity, the way we perceive and understand time is central to our existence. Right now, time for us is still largely the familiar beat of Earth’s rotation and our heartbeats, organized into calendars and clocks that assume a shared pace. But in the coming centuries, that may change dramatically. We will have to ask: What is “now” when “now” is relative? How do human rituals and orientation adapt when one person’s year is another’s decade? Our ingenuity will be tested not just in engineering spacecraft, but in re-engineering our concept of time.
Perhaps the greatest evolution will be in our perspective – to see time not as a tyrant against whom we struggle, but as a landscape we can navigate in new ways. We may learn to cherish the subjective moments of our lives even more, knowing that time is not one-size-fits-all. And we might develop a profound humility and curiosity as we encounter situations that seem paradoxical: like meeting a pair of twins, one having lived a full life on Earth and the other only a few years aboard a fast ship. Who truly is older or “of the same generation”? The answer might be both and neither. We’ll have to widen our definitions.
In the end, the prospect of humans experiencing time differently forces us to confront the essence of why time matters to us. It’s the thread that connects our memories, shapes our plans, and gives context to our stories. If that thread tangles or stretches, we must weave new narratives. The seasons once gave us a cyclic story; modern progress gives us a linear story; relativistic travel could give us an elliptical, looping story where beginnings and endings blur.
Standing on the cusp of becoming a spacefaring species, we can only wonder and ask: How will we, as humans, evolve to orient ourselves in such a brave new temporal world? Will our minds stretch to find comfort in relativistic truths, or will we cling to the old metronomes of Earth? As we peer into that possible future, every answer begets new questions. Perhaps the final lesson is that time – however it is experienced – will always challenge us to adapt and find meaning. Our species has looked at the stars for millennia, measuring time by their motions; soon we may ride those motions and measure time by our own. In doing so, we carry with us the timeless human capacity for wonder. And maybe, just maybe, that is how we’ll navigate the currents of time: not with fear, but with curiosity and the age-old resilience that has seen us through all the epochs we’ve lived, side by side with the turning world. The clock is ticking – differently for each of us – but our search for understanding is one thing that remains truly synchronised across time and space.