The formless shape of time

The late theoretical physicist and cosmologist found in the brilliant mind of Stephen Hawking was arguably best known for his mastery over understanding time, almost to the same extent that Albert Einstein was believed to understand the universe better than anyone else in his time. We see these in such profound demonstrations, as in Hawking’s literary accomplishments such as A Brief History of Time, and similarly in, The Universe in a Nutshell. In works such as these, and many others like them, Hawking goes so far as to illustrate that time has its shape. So important was this idea to him, that he dedicated an entire chapter to it in, The Universe in a Nutshell.

What is there to be said about time? We are almost all familiar with the expression that time waits for no man. We mistakenly believe that we have time, although this is impossible. Time is not some tangible thing that we can have. But time is important to us. When we are at the end of our life’s journey, there is nothing we want more than time; time to spend doing the things that we love, or to be spent with the ones that we love. We might even be familiar with the saying that time is nature’s way of preventing everything from happening at once. We’ve given a construct to time, built circular devices that tell us what time it is, and it is as if our entire lives revolve around time. As homo sapiens, we differ from most animals, because…