Beautiful wade-fishing sunset in Port O’Connor. -Photo by Mack Davis

What time is it? That is a question we often ask or are often asked. The more perplexing question is different. What is time?. That is, as they say, the 64 dollar question. If we have a watch or clock we all know what time it is. However, the second question still doesn’t have a definite answer.

Einstein said time and space are hooked together. Modern quantum physicists spend hours and lots of effort to explain what that means. They say things like, clocks go slower when they are moving faster like in a plane. We measure time by how many times a certain atom vibrates a second and when a jet plane flies around the world the test atomic clock has a few less vibrations than the same type of clock that stayed on the ground. So who really understands. Actually it wasn’t the same atom vibrating.

The upshot of it is that time is what our clocks tell us it is. And that is based on how fast the earth rotates both on its axis and around the sun. So if we were on a different planet it would be different wouldn’t it? What we really know is that time does pass.

This time of year the sun rises in the east. It does so late enough that I frequently watch it. When one visits a beach on the West Coast of Florida you can watch the sun set into the Gulf of Mexico. Living on the west side of Carancua Bay, I can watch it rise from the bay. In both situations one of the amazing things is how fast that ole sun is moving down close to the horizon. We get a sense of how fast the earth is really rotating The difference between sunrise and sunset is the passing of the daylight during the season you are watching it pass.

Living out here one can easily see that sun moves north and south as the seasons change. Those astrophysicists call that the ecliptic. Each year at the time of equinox, that passage is right over the equator. That’s when the daylight time and night time are equal. It happens in September and March.

As the sun rose this morning the old song “Sunrise, Sunset” popped into my mind. For those of you that are not as long of whisker as I am, that song was from the movie and musical “Fiddler on the Roof”. It has a verse in its lyrics that describes what can be called the real meaning of time. That passage has these words.

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

In “Fiddler” the song is at the wedding of the older couple’s children and they are reflecting on the new cycle starting. When you think about it, that is the way of life. Regardless of what time it is, a cycle is starting, a cycle ending. That is what time is.