Time: "The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole. The continued progress of existence as affecting people and things."
Is time the conundrum of conundrums? I don't know. Add it to the list.
"Empathy is a clock that ticks in the consciousness of another..." Hmmm. When we connect with other folks, do we synchronize our clocks?
Borges: “Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”
Yes. Maybe we are time. Time is what we are made of. We are time-keepers and time-makers. We embody time. We can speed it up and slow it down. And in some rare cases make it stop.
Alan Burdick: "Time is a social phenomenon. This property is not incidental to time; it is its essence. Time, equally in single cells as in their human conglomerates, is the engine of interaction. A single clock works only as long as it refers, sooner or later, obviously or not, to the other clocks around it. One can rage about it, and we do. But without a clock and the dais of time, we each rage in silence, alone."