On the frantic runway leading up to final exams, time often seems like the most valuable commodity in the world. More than food, more than knowledge, even more than friends. Time is the vessel for all other values, and we rush to cram into this vessel all that we can. There are only 24 hours in a day, and there is so much to do. So, we break up our days into concentrated chunks of the essential. Study, eat, talk to friends, repeat, transitioning from one chunk to the next with swift moving feet. We think we are maximizing the day, making the best use of our most valuable commodity; however, this “maximization” comes at the expense of far more than just a good night’s sleep.

In his novel Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman imagines, among other things, a world in which “time passes more slowly for people in motion” (Lightman 70). Incredibly, according to the findings of special relativity, time does pass “more slowly” for objects in motion—though, at speeds far smaller than the speed of light, the effect of motion on time is negligible. Nevertheless, in this imagined world, “when a person comes out of his front door at sunrise, he hits the ground running, catches up with his office buildings, hurries up and down flights of stairs, works at a desk propelled in circles, gallops home at the end of the day. No one sits under a tree with a book, no one gazes at the ripples on a pond, no one lies in thick grass in the country. No one is still” (Lightman 70). Sound familiar? The troubling world described here is far from imaginary. It is our world exactly—or at least the world I inhabited on that frantic runway leading up to finals.

Why do we rush? Why do we race from one moment to the next? It is because in both Lightman’s world and our own, time is the most valuable commodity in the world. We think of time as a currency continuously spent. If we cannot significantly increase our time by rushing from event to event, we might as well maximize its utility. Every minute must be spent productively, every second used constructively. Being a smart temporal consumer means spending time exclusively on what is necessary. Our great fear is that if we do not rush, we cannot maximize each day. If we don’t maximize each day, then we are not maximizing the year. If we don’t maximize the year, our lives are being wasted. Study, eat, talk to friends, repeat. Keep your head down. Don’t look up from the textbook. Don’t waste a single instant on what is unnecessary. Unfortunately, this formula—or more accurately, this account of what is necessary—does not leave room for stillness.

Now that the semester is over, I have an abundance of time. Time to relax. Time to think. Time to reflect back on my first semester of college and on the year as a whole. Specifically, as I’m sure you have noticed, I have been thinking about time itself, about special relativity. This was the focus of my physics class for the last month or so. While learning about special relativity, I fell into the formulaic “learn what I need to know” mindset as the semester’s overall workload increased. What are the key concepts? What are the equations? How do I use them to answer the questions I am given? This mindset dictated the way I spent my time approaching the final exam; spend time only on what is necessary, on the information I need to know. I allowed my understanding of “necessary” to be defined by the rapidly approaching exam. Thus, maximizing my time meant burying myself in my physics textbook (Six Ideas that Shaped Physics by Thomas Moore), answering important questions like:

Imagine that an advanced alien race, bent on keeping humans from escaping into the galaxy, places an opaque spherical force field around the solar system. The force field is 6 light hours in radius, is centered on the sun, and is formed in a single instant of time as measured by synchronized clocks in an inertial frame attached to the sun. That instant corresponds to 9 p.m. on a certain night in your time zone. When does the opaque sphere appear to start blocking light from the stars from your vantage point on earth? (Moore 550)

I viewed this question as important. Necessary even! I approached it as if the answer would cure AIDS or something. In reality, outside the context of this class, when am I ever going to need to know when the alien force field will begin blocking the starlight? Likely never. So, why learn something like special relativity if not for the utility of the knowledge? We learn it because it is amazing, incredible, and awe-inspiring. The passage of time slows down for moving objects—how incredible and counterintuitive! But I did not consider this at the time. I fell victim to the wonders of my study. I rushed to cram the concepts and equations into my head hoping to maximize my time by focusing on what was absolutely necessary— “necessary” meaning “what I need to know to pass my exam.”

But something was lost in the rush. I missed something with my head submerged in my textbook. Namely, I was missing a conscious appreciation for the wonder of special relativity, an appreciation which can only be found in the stillness of reflection. Don’t get me wrong. There is something beautiful about being completely absorbed by the flow of a particular moment. Think Klay Thompson when he scored 37 points in a single quarter. But, greater significance is gained through reflection. Time is the most valuable commodity in the world; maximizing it requires both movement and stillness. You can travel at the speed of light and have all the time in the world, but what meaning does the time have if the moments are left unexamined and the wonder disregarded.

Stop. Be still. Reflection should not be limited to New Year’s Eve.