Considering Time
“Thus what we call tedium is rather an abnormal shortening of the time consequent upon monotony. Great spaces of time passed in unbroken uniformity tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop beating for fear; when one day is like all the others, then they are all like one; complete uniformity would make the longest life seem short, and as though it had stolen away from us unawares.” So said Thomas Mann in his philosophical novel, The Magic Mountain . A story which defined one semester of my college years, and proceeded to influence my early adulthood. The concept of time passage that Mann presents here is one with which anyone observing the current "stay at home" practices may suddenly be discovering. The country has generally taken a step back, things have slowed, the economy is falling apart, and amidst it all, we feel as though time has sped up. But it hasn't. It is the repetitiveness in every detail of our daily lives which has caused th...