What is Time? [Part 2]

Physics, Philosophy, and the Models That Help Us Make Sense of It

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-🏴‍☠️-Author’s Note-🏴‍☠️-

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No short story opener this time. Those will return later in the series, but this one needed a different tone. Just a heads up, this isn’t a quick read. It’s dense, layered, and meant to be chewed on, not skimmed. If your inbox cuts it off halfway, hit “expand” or whatever your email service calls it. I didn’t write this for speed. I wrote it to matter. And if you stick with it, I think it will.

After finishing the draft, I realized I hadn’t done the best job explaining my approach. This isn’t meant to be a definitive scientific paper. It’s a hybrid. A glimpse into how I process the world, using a blend of science, philosophy, and lived experience.

To be honest, what you’re about to read is a tiny fraction of the research I’ve done. When my brother visited recently, he asked how deep I really go into these topics and how far I chase these questions. I answered him over the course of a three hour walk through the weeds. (He’s a saint for it, because I’ve never been accused of being short winded.) Somewhere in that conversation, it finally clicked for him. He saw how far down the rabbit hole I’ve gone looking for answers, and how writing, research, and reflection helped pull me out of the well I was trapped in.

He also saw something else. That there’s no going back to “normal,” or what others like to call “the old Josh.” I’m not the same person I was. But I’m a better father, a better husband, and a more present brother for it. I don’t carry less, I taught myself to carry it differently. With clarity. With purpose. And with questions I no longer fear asking out loud.

This series is different. Most of what I’ve published so far on Substack came from years of notes, older drafts, or essays that had been living in my head long before I hit ‘publish.’ But this one didn’t exist until recently. No backlog. No warmup. A blank page and a question that’s haunted me for years. One that’s lingered at the edge of memory, always felt, never fully spoken.

This is the first time I’ve started completely from scratch. Researching, thinking, and writing with no map, all in real time. I began with a single word: Time. Then I chased it. Each topic includes footnoted sources for the research papers I explored, though what’s included here is only a small sample of how deep I went. If you’re a visual learner, I’ve also added links to YouTube videos near the end of the introduction, just before I get to my own explanations. I’m both kinds of learner myself. One part of my brain thrives on dissecting dense academic papers, while another part needs a visual anchor to truly grasp the complexity of these ideas.

What follows is merely the tip of the iceberg. I’m always down for a conversation about anything I write, just know to come with an open mind. I don’t bite on polarizing topics that come and go like fads. I think deep, and I’m not ashamed of it. But if you’re willing to have an emotionally intelligent and inquisitive conversation about some crazy ass topics, pull up your favorite camping chair and sit with me, Under the Crooked Tree.

-🏴‍☠️-Framework-🏴‍☠️-

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Time Isn’t What You Think

We talk about time like it’s solid. Like it’s something we can hold, count, and spend. Sixty seconds in a minute. Sixty minutes in an hour. Twenty four hours in a day. That’s not a truth, it’s a system. A man made convenience mapped onto the rotation of a rock around a star. It’s not universal. It’s not absolute. It’s a language we invented to give chaos a structure.

But time doesn’t follow our rules.

It stretches. It bends. It gets weird the closer you look at it. Not metaphorically… literally.

Einstein’s theories cracked the idea of time as a fixed constant. In both General and Special Relativity¹, time is relative to your position and velocity. Gravity distorts it. Speed stretches it. This isn’t philosophical speculation, it’s physical reality. Time moves slower when you’re near a massive object. Clocks tick differently in orbit than they do on Earth. GPS satellites drift from Earth based time if not constantly corrected. That’s built into the math, not bolted on later.

So right from the start, we have to let go of the illusion that time is stable.

But the instability doesn’t stop at physics. In real life, where memories blur and trauma distorts, time behaves even stranger.

Ever sat in a hospital room where minutes dragged like hours? Or blinked and somehow a whole year was gone? Time isn’t flat. It isn’t fair. It doesn’t owe you symmetry. And it doesn’t need your permission to accelerate or vanish.

That dissonance between what time should be and what it feels like is where this essay lives.

I’m not here to build a new unified theory of the universe. I’m here to dig into what it means when the standard model breaks down, when you’re the observer, and your clock doesn’t match anyone else’s.

Because that mismatch? That’s where truth starts leaking through.

So, if you're looking for an easy definition of time, try this: Time is change measured from a specific perspective². The problem is that the perspective keeps shifting. Especially when you’ve lived through the kind of chaos that rewires how you even track change.

This isn’t a clean exploration. There’s no timeline here, only fractures. But inside those fractures, we might finally find something worth piecing together.

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The Problem of Definition

Science defines time in the simplest way possible: “Time is what a clock measures.”³

That’s not a joke. That’s the operational definition used in physics. For all our technological advances, our best definition of time is still tethered to machinery: a ticking device, vibrating atom, or oscillating crystal.

The international standard second is based on the cesium-133 atom, which vibrates exactly 9,192,631,770 times per second⁴. That number isn’t mystical. It’s consistent. That’s the whole point. We rely on regular, repeating physical phenomena to measure something we still don’t fully understand.

But defining time by measurement is like defining distance by how many steps you take. It tells you nothing about what’s actually being measured, just how to keep score.

From a scientific standpoint, time is treated as the fourth dimension in the fabric of spacetime⁵. Einstein’s General Relativity links space and time into a unified geometry. Where mass bends spacetime and in doing so, warps the passage of time. In that model, time isn’t something separate, it’s part of the terrain.

So, in physics, time is a coordinate⁶. A label. A dimension you can map. But again, that doesn’t explain what it is. Just how it behaves when you run it through equations.

That brings us to one of the biggest rifts in modern science: Time works in the equations, but it doesn’t exist in some of the most fundamental ones.

Take the Wheeler–DeWitt equation⁷:

This equation governs the quantum state of the entire universe, and guess what’s missing? Time. There’s no [ t ] anywhere in it. It’s timeless. And that’s not some obscure footnote, this is one of the core issues in quantum gravity. Time, well… vanishes.

The same issue comes up in certain interpretations of quantum mechanics. While time appears in the Schrödinger equation⁸:

Some physicists argue that this dependency only emerges after an observer is introduced. Until then there’s only a probability cloud, potential, not process.

This has led to theories that time is not fundamental, but emergent. It arises when enough complexity, interaction, or observation forces things into sequence. Like how heat doesn’t exist in a single molecule, but only emerges when trillions start bumping around.

So time might not be built into the bones of reality. It might be something we generate through our interaction with change.

That’s the hard pill to swallow. We trust clocks, calendars, timestamps. But underneath all of that, beneath the mechanical repetition and digital precision, we don’t actually know what time is. We only know how it moves for us.

And maybe that’s all we ever needed to know, until it started moving differently.

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The Mechanics of Movement

Time doesn’t flow evenly. That’s the first rule science broke for me. It doesn’t march in lockstep across the cosmos like some universal metronome. It stretches, bends, and warps depending on where you are and how fast you’re going. And it can fragment in your mind long before it ever breaks in your body.

Thanks to Einstein’s theories of relativity, we know that time is deeply tied to two forces: gravity and velocity.

Let’s start with gravitational time dilation⁹. The stronger the gravity, the slower time moves. If you live at the bottom of a gravity well (say, closer to Earth’s surface) time ticks a little slower for you than it does for someone on a mountaintop. Not enough to notice in your day to day, but enough to mess up your GPS if we didn’t compensate for it.

Now flip the frame: Special Relativity tells us that if you travel near the speed of light, time slows down for you relative to someone who’s stationary. The faster you go, the more time stretches. If you could ride a beam of light, time would almost freeze. This isn’t science fiction, it’s backed by equations and real world experiments with particles in accelerators.

Here’s the time dilation equation from special relativity:

[ Δt ] is the time experienced by someone stationary
[ v ] is your velocity
[ c ] is the speed of light
[ Δt' ] is how slow time feels for you

The closer [ v ] gets to [ c ], the more time dilates. Astronauts age a little slower than we do down here, not by much, but the math checks out. And by “checks out,” I mean someone with a physics degree did the checking. I just nodded a lot and tried not to look confused. Still, I get the gist. Time bends and sometimes it gives you the finger while doing it.

Then there’s entropy¹⁰, the silent arrow behind the scenes. The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy, disorder, tends to increase. Ice melts, things fall apart, coffee cools. The universe slides toward chaos, and that slide gives time its direction.

Here’s the rule: ΔS ≥ 0

Where ΔS is the change in entropy. The total disorder of a closed system never decreases.

This is the real reason you remember the past and not the future. Not because time prefers one direction but because your memory rides on entropy’s back.

But even this gets strange. The laws of physics (the equations that describe motion, light, gravity) they work in both directions. Time forward or time backward, it doesn’t matter. They’re symmetrical. A shattered glass could as easily unshatter in the math.

But we don’t live in that kind of reality. We live in one where things break, not unbreak. And that’s why entropy matters. It’s not that time flows forward, it’s that disorder always wins, and we ride that wave whether we want to or not.

Even in quantum mechanics, time plays games. The Schrödinger equation has time in it, yes, but it treats time as external. It’s not something quantum systems generate, it’s something imposed on them. Which is why, again, theories are emerging that time may not be fundamental. It may not exist until you observe, interact, remember.

So now you’ve got three pieces. Relativity, which says time is flexible depending on motion and gravity. Entropy, which gives time direction through decay. Quantum mechanics¹¹, which treats time as optional, maybe even artificial.

This is the framework: shaped by memory, molded by research, and held together with lived experience. But it’s still incomplete. What’s missing is you - your moments, your distortions, your quiet reckonings with time. Without that, it’s just a structure. It becomes real when you trace your own story through it.

Because for all the math and mechanics, time is also personal. Two people can live the same hour and walk away with wildly different memories of how long it felt. That friction, the distance between the clock and the mind, is where we’re heading next.

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What I Watched Instead of Sleeping

These are some of the clearest, most accessible videos I’ve found for anyone beginning their own exploration into time and physics. No clickbait, I promise. Just straight talk from experts who actually know what they’re doing.

Veritasium: | Entropy | Quantum Mechanics |

Veritasium delivers truth through curiosity, often revealing how we misunderstand the world around us and why that matters. It’s where science meets insight, and the lessons often go beyond formulas into how we perceive reality itself.

To Scale: | Scale of Time |

To Scale doesn’t just explain science, it shows you what it feels like to stand inside it. It’s about shrinking the infinite just enough to help you grasp its weight.

Big Think: | Brain Cox explains quantum physics | Time Explained | How Einstein Changed Time Forever

Big Think is where you go when TED Talks feel too rehearsed, and you want raw insight straight from the source. Like having coffee with the minds shaping the future and asking the questions that actually matter.

Welch Labs: | Schrödinger's equation |

Welch Labs is for the curious mind that enjoys math and science not just for answers, but for the wonder behind the questions. It’s like if Carl Sagan had a whiteboard and a quiet afternoon to walk you through the mysteries of the universe.

Kurzgesagt: | The Paradox of Time |

Kurzgesagt is where the cosmos, biology, and human nature meet in a beautifully animated explainer that makes you question reality, then helps you feel okay about it.

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-🏴‍☠️-Essay-🏴‍☠️-

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Formulas for the Fog

Most people don’t wake up wondering what the derivative of their grief is or how to factor in memory loss before breakfast. But after enough chaos, enough “what the hell happened to the last ten years” moments, you stop seeing time as a straight line. You stop trusting the clock.

Traditional physics doesn’t get that. Not really. It teaches us that time bends near gravity, slows with velocity, and flows with entropy. I respect that deeply. But it’s not enough. Because science doesn’t model the kind of time loss that comes with dissociation. When PTSD stretches minutes into hours, then robs you of years. When you lived through something but it feels like it never happened. Or worse, like it all happened at once.

There’s no constant in a physics book for the weight of regret. No standard deviation for the fog of medication, or a control group for the way adrenaline sharpens seconds into glass. And yet, we still need to measure. We still need to map it somehow.

That’s what these equations are.

They aren’t designed to impress. They’re not clean. They weren’t built in a lab. They were carved out under pressure. Stitched together with research, trial, memory, and a need to understand what the hell happened to all that time I lost.

These next equations, for me, are like maps drawn in the ashes. They don’t fix the fire, but they show where it burned. They bring structure to the unspeakable. They reveal patterns that memory hides, and they anchor a little clarity in the fog.

Each equation in the next section focuses on a specific distortion of time. Some came from my past in chaos. Others from recovery. All of them started as questions I couldn’t stop asking. Questions that followed me into dark rooms, long drives, and too many nights staring at the ceiling.

I’m not trying to rewrite Einstein. I’m trying to translate what I lived. These are not the laws of physics. They’re field models, tools I built when theory failed and the storm was already overhead.

For each model, you’ll see the equation, a breakdown of each variable, and how it applies to the real world. Sometimes scientifically and sometimes philosophically. None of it’s perfect. But it’s real. And for me, that’s what matters most.

Because time isn’t just measured. It’s felt and those feelings don’t fit the clock.

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Equation 1

Name: Distorted Time Equation

Purpose: This equation models how chaos, memory disruption, and subconscious defenses distort our perception of time. It’s built to explain why someone can “lose” days, weeks, or entire periods of life without realizing it. This isn't poetic, it’s how chaos rewires perception. This model helps give form to a formless feeling: the sense that time passed, but you were never there.

It draws from Einstein’s principles of relativity, where gravity bends time, and applies them metaphorically to psychological pressure. Just as a massive object warps spacetime, emotional chaos can warp your memory of time. The goal is to expose this invisible pull and map how the internal gravity of trauma affects experienced reality.

Equation:

Variable Breakdown:

[ T_d ] Distorted Time: This is the time you feel has passed, not what the clock says. It can be jagged, hollow, or missing entirely. It’s how many trauma survivors describe their days: “It’s like I wasn’t even there,” or “that whole year is just… gone.” This variable captures that fractured sense, where time passed but left no footprint.

[ T_o ] Objective Time: This is literal time, what a clock or calendar measures. It ticks forward with no regard for trauma, joy, or memory. Think of it like the speed limit on a deserted highway: always consistent, even if you’re asleep at the wheel or swerving through a storm. It represents “real” time, against which our memory and presence are compared.

[ M_c ] Memory Consistency: This variable measures the clarity and cohesion of your memory. High memory consistency means your experiences are intact and sequenced, creating a strong grip on when things happened. Low consistency feels like scattered puzzle pieces. Events are blurry, out of order, or missing. For those with TBIs or PTSD, this drop is common. You were there, but you don’t remember. The film ran. The lens was in focus. But the memory card? Corrupted.

[ C_e ] Chaos Exposure: This represents the intensity and duration of external disruption: violence, injury, constant stress, betrayal, upheaval. It’s the gravity well. The more chaos, the more memory and perception begin to slip. Chaos exposure is weighted heavily in the denominator because it's the mass pulling at the flow of lived time.

[ D_f ] Dissociation Factor: This captures the protective psychological mechanism that numbs you out when things get too heavy. It’s the moment your mind checks out to keep functioning. A high dissociation factor means time is happening, but you’re not registering it. Like autopilot on a plane you didn’t mean to board. Veterans, abuse survivors, and anyone who’s lived in prolonged survival mode know this effect well.

[ μ ] Subconscious Interference: This variable accounts for what you’ve buried: suppression, repression, defense mechanisms that operate without permission. These are the mental edits made without your conscious input. Over time, they clutter or alter memory, adding distortion without your awareness. This includes internalized shame, restructured narratives, and emotional dead zones.

Model Application

This model serves as a tool to reflect on whether you’re living time or letting it pass through you. It can be used introspectively to analyze phases of life that feel “missing” or to explain why some moments feel longer or shorter than they should.

Let’s say you had a six month deployment that feels like a blink. You were under constant threat [high C_e], often numb [high D_f], and you compartmentalized heavily [high μ]. Your memory is patchy [low M_c]. Even if [T_o] is six months, [ T_d ] might only register as a few emotional days. That’s not merely perception, it’s the neurological cost of surviving chaos.

Now flip it. A calm summer with your kids (low chaos, minimal dissociation, and vivid memory) may feel longer than it actually was. That’s the power of presence and clarity, and it’s how this model helps illuminate the true cost of time lost.

Use this as a mirror. It won’t give you back what’s missing, but it might explain why it slipped through your hands.

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Equation 2

Name: Dissociative Time Gap Model

Purpose: This model captures the phenomenon where time doesn’t just compress, it disappears. It’s not about distortion. It’s about deletion. Time was there, you were technically there, but it left no trace. You went on a mission, you completed the task, you survived the day but years later, it’s a blank.

This equation explains why: dissociative activity paired with intentional mental displacement creates a measurable psychological gap. The longer the mission, the deeper the compartmentalization, the more time goes unregistered. It's not memory loss in the traditional sense. It's memory dormancy, scar tissue from cognitive survival mode.

It draws a line between lived time and accessed time. You lived it, but you boxed it up so tightly your brain can’t or won’t open it.

Equation:

Variable Breakdown:

[ T_g ] Time Gap (experienced): This is the time you feel is missing. Not shortened, not blurred… gone. It represents the unregistered space between “what happened” and “what you remember.” Think of it as negative space on your timeline: the missions you know you completed, but can't feel; the conversations you vaguely recall having, but couldn’t repeat to save your life.

[ T_o ] Objective Time: Again, this is literal clock time. It’s the full stretch of time that actually passed, unaffected by how you felt during it. Whether it’s six hours or six months, it’s the full measure of time lived, not filtered through your brain’s trauma lens.

[ D_a ] Dissociative Activity: This measures how often and how deeply you disengaged from conscious awareness during the period in question. For veterans or high stress operators, this is the skill of tuning out everything unrelated to the mission: home, feelings, longterm consequences. It’s not avoidance, it’s tactical compartmentalization. But over time, it rewires neural pathways. The brain stops recording because it’s told those inputs are nonessential.

[ I_d ] Intentional Displacement: This is the psychological effort made to push thoughts away. It includes trained suppression, emotional numbing, and compartmentalization. Habits learned not just in chaos but in dysfunctional homes, chaotic relationships, or corporate burnout. It's the willful act of saying “that doesn’t matter right now” for days, months, or years at a time. It keeps you functional in chaos but erodes access to memory.

Model Application

This equation is useful for reflecting on moments where you know you were present, but nothing stuck. Think of long deployments, hospital stays, stretches of addiction, or even burnout periods where your body was moving but your brain was somewhere else.

Let’s say [ T_o ] is 12 months. But you were in mission mode the entire time, running high [ D_a ] levels. You also made a conscious effort to not think about home, future plans, or the emotional reality of it all [high I_d ]. That creates a huge deduction from [ T_o ], and the result is a disturbingly low [ T_g ], a gap in lived experience.

This isn't fiction. It's how survival rewires you. You adapted by shutting things off. The cost is time you can't get back.

But here's where it becomes more than a mirror, recognizing this gap is the first step to reclaiming time going forward. You can’t fix what’s missing, but you can prevent the next year from being blank space. This model isn’t diagnostic, it’s preventative.

It challenges you to ask: What am I refusing to feel right now?
Because whatever it is, it might be stealing your time.

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Equation 3

Name: Compounded Distortion Model

Purpose: This equation captures a deeper, more tangled version of time loss, not from one cause, but from a cluster of chaos. Unlike the Dissociative Time Gap Model, which isolates a clean subtraction of memory due to intentional disengagement, this model shows what happens when multiple disruptions layer on top of one another: chaos in your environment, unresolved trauma, and memory degradation all compounding into a warped sense of time.

It’s the equation for when you lived it, remember some of it, but it still doesn’t feel like it happened in the right order… or at all. A week feels like a month. A year feels like three days. Everything folds inward.

Equation:

Variable Breakdown:

[ T_e ] Experienced Time: This is your perception of time, not how long something was, but how long it felt. In this model, time doesn’t disappear. It fractures. It expands in some places, shrinks in others, and shifts unpredictably based on what you carried with you during the experience. It’s the feeling of “Where did the time go?” even when you know exactly what happened.

[ T_o ] Objective Time: Again, this is the clock based time. The denominator in this equation, it represents the baseline to which we compare all our distortions. It's the measure we assume is linear, consistent, and real. But what happens above that line changes everything.

[ C_r ] Chaos Ratio: This variable scales how much chaos is present in your environment or internal state. It’s not just stress. It’s the number of unknowns, threats, and emotional swings. Think of a hurricane, [ C_r ] is the wind speed, but also the debris inside the storm. High [ C_r ] means time perception becomes harder to stabilize.

[ T_f ] Trauma Factor: This is the magnitude of an acute or chronic trauma. The higher the [ T_f ], the greater the emotional and psychological disruption during the time window. It includes exposure to violence, personal loss, betrayal, accidents, or events that spike the nervous system and mark the memory. But in distorted or fragmented ways.

[ M_d ] Memory Degradation: This includes any neurological degradation caused by TBIs, long term PTSD, insomnia, medication, or even time itself. It’s not about the traumatic event, it’s about the erosion that comes afterward. When you try to remember, but it comes back fuzzy, or not at all. It's when the brain no longer prioritizes clarity because it's been forced to live in overdrive for too long.

Model Application

This model is powerful when reflecting on why certain seasons of life feel out of sync. Why does that year feel like a blur? Why does a single week feel like a decade? Because chaos, trauma, and memory issues are not separate: they amplify each other.

Say you went through a deployment. [ T_o ] is 9 months. But your chaos ratio was off the charts. Near daily uncertainty. Compound trauma. And your memory system was already compromised from prior injuries or sleep loss. Add those together, and your [ T_e ] might feel like 3 years and 3 days at the same time. Disjointed. Irregular. Fractured.

This is the feeling that time isn’t linear anymore. That your past isn’t a smooth timeline, it’s a shattered plate. This model gives language to that feeling. It explains why someone can forget the details of a traumatic year, yet still carry the emotional weight of it like it just happened yesterday.

From a practical standpoint, this equation helps identify which variable is driving the distortion: is your environment too chaotic? Are past traumas being dragged behind you like an anchor? Is your memory capacity being drained?

And here’s the catch, you can’t control the past. But if you reduce [ C_r ] by controlling your inputs, your pace, your recovery, you give yourself a better shot at living in sync again.

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Equation 4

Name: Presence Amplification Model

Purpose: This model flips the script. It’s not about what steals your time but what gives it back. It represents how presence, focus, and meaningful activity can stretch your experience of time in the best way. It’s the model for those moments that feel fuller, slower, richer. Not because time slowed down, but because you showed up for it.

This equation doesn’t erase chaos or distraction. Instead, it shows how amplifying your presence and attention can dilute their effects. It’s not escapism or avoidance, it’s engagement.

Equation:

Variable Breakdown:

[ T_s ] Subjective Time (Expanded): This is the measure of how full and grounded time feels. It’s not longer or shorter, it’s deeper. It’s those afternoons when you lose track of the clock not because you're distracted, but because you’re completely immersed. For me it’s watching my kids play their favorite sport, the quiet morning writing, or the final sanding stroke on a piece of wood that’s taken weeks to shape. These are the moments I remember as they happen, and they stretch across my memory like golden threads.

[ P_a ] Presence Applied: This is the mental arrival to the moment. It’s the variable most people miss. You can physically be somewhere, but your mind is still chasing ghosts. [ P_a ] is a multiplier of awareness, stillness, and voluntary attention. You choose to be there, rather than letting your nervous system or phone hijack the moment.

[ A_e ] Attention Engagement: This is where effort meets presence. [ A_e ] measures how much of your focus is dedicated to a single task or experience. It could be a conversation, a woodworking project, a book, or even silence. High engagement equals higher time resonance, meaning the moment leaves an imprint. It gets stored, remembered, and felt.

[ D_i ] Distraction Index: This captures the noise. The pull from apps, social media, half finished conversations, emotional reactivity. [ D_i ] is how often your attention is fractured. The higher this number, the harder it is for presence to take hold. Most people’s [ D_i ] is maxed out without even realizing it.

[ C_d ] Cognitive Drift: This is the internal first cousin of distraction. It’s not external noise, it’s the wandering mind. When you’re with your family but thinking about bills. When you're in the woods but still hearing your phone. [ C_d ] tracks how much mental static is playing beneath the surface, draining your engagement. PTSD, anxiety, and burnout exponentially increase this number, sometimes sharply.

Model Application

This is the model for reclaiming time. Not by fighting the clock, but by changing the quality of your attention. When both [ P_a ] and [ A_e ] are strong, the denominator becomes smaller. That means [ T_s ], your experience of time, grows.

For example, compare two hours: One is spent doomscrolling on the couch, bouncing between text messages, and watching something you won’t remember. The other is spent cooking with your kids, fully there, laughing, moving, remembering your own childhood. Same [ T_o ], but completely different [ T_s ].

This is why time feels slower in certain places. Not because the hours are different, but because your inputs are. When distractions fall away and the noise dims, presence stops fighting for air. It settles and it sharpens. You begin to feel the full shape of a moment instead of brushing past it.

But presence isn’t passive. It doesn’t arrive by accident. It’s forged through discipline, through choosing stillness when stimulation is easier, through carving out quiet when the world is loud. That’s what this model reflects. Not a trick to stop the clock, but a tool to reclaim your attention. To show that time doesn’t always need to be conquered, it just needs to be honored.

The difference isn’t in the ticking. It’s in your ability to hear it.

This model also explains why people in flow states (artists, craftsmen, athletes, even monks) describe time as “different.” It’s not a superpower. It’s just a refined ratio.

If you can lower [ D_i ] and [ C_d ] by setting boundaries. Recovering from trauma and focusing on what matters. Thats when you start living time instead of losing it.

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Equation 5

Name: Time Theft Equation

Purpose: This equation is about identifying what steals your time, not in seconds or hours, but in weight. It represents the hidden variables that subtract from your experienced life, even when the clock keeps ticking forward. Unlike the earlier equations, which model distortion, presence, or gaps in time, this one models erosion. It’s a tool for recognition, to make the invisible visible.

This model doesn’t accuse. It reveals. It answers that haunting question:
“Where did all my time go?”

Equation:

Variable Breakdown:

[ T_l ] Time Lost: This is the felt sense of life slipping by without meaning. Not just wasted hours but years that passed in distraction, appeasement, or mental shutdown. [ T_l ] is the measure of how much life you missed while still technically living.

[ T_o ] Objective Time: Same as in earlier models: the calendar time that passed. It’s the clock’s version of reality. And it never stops moving. But that’s exactly why this equation matters, because [ T_o ] will always add up. The question is, what’s left after subtracting everything below?

[ H_b ] Habitual Bleed: This is the daily erosion. The time drained by autopilot behaviors: checking the phone first thing, numbing out with TV, staying in the same cycle because it’s easy. [ H_b ] is silent and cumulative. Ten minutes a hundred times is still nearly seventeen hours. A year of this is lethal to presence.

[ S_d ] Social Drain: This variable captures time stolen by obligations that serve no one. Toxic friends. Shallow events. People you tolerate because you’re afraid of saying no. [ S_d ] also includes the guilt that comes from trying to live for others’ expectations. It's heavy but it adds nothing to your lived experience.

[ E_d ] Emotional Decay: This one digs deep. [ E_d ] is the toll trauma, anxiety, and unprocessed pain takes on your perception of time. It includes emotional numbness and hyper-vigilance. Those periods where you were surviving but not feeling. Living but not present. Months and years can vanish this way. This is where PTSD and TBIs most often hide.

[ R_c ] Regret Compression: This is the time subtracted not by action, but by inaction. The moments you could’ve taken a walk, made a call, started a journal, built something, but didn’t. [ R_c ] shows up not just in the timeline, but in the heart. It's the weight of what could’ve been, compacting the memory of what actually was.

Model Application

This model is the audit. It doesn’t offer redemption or solutions. Not yet. Its purpose is clarity. If you fill in this equation honestly, you don’t just get a number, you get a roadmap. You start seeing what’s bleeding you dry.

In my life, this equation can explain why I left that old pace behind. It’s why Maine feels not just slower, but clearer. I cut [ S_d ] when you left fake friends behind. I slashed [ H_b ] by replacing social media with researching and woodworking. I stared down [ E_d ] in philosophy and in raising my daughters with intention. And [ R_c ]? I’m answering it right now, every time I write.

This is the wakeup call. You might not resonate with PTSD or memory gaps, but everyone can feel this one. Time isn’t stolen by monsters, it’s lost in inches. This model helps you name the thief.

And once you name it?

You can fight to take your time back.

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Final Thoughts

There’s no shortage of research out there on Time, brilliant minds have built an entire framework around it. From elegant curvature of spacetime to quantum equations that defy common sense, the science side of the house has done its part. And it’s good… damn good. But none of it ever really told me what Time is. Not in a way that felt true to how I’ve lived it.

Don’t get me wrong, I owe a massive debt to voices like Brian Cox, Alex McColgan, Derek Muller, and many others who helped to shaped the way I think. They laid the groundwork. Their insights gave me the structure I needed to try and explain something I’ve never been able to hold, only feel. Science speaks with precision and in well founded theories. In many ways, it gives us the cleanest lens possible. But lenses have filters and human emotion doesn’t always pass through clean.

This essay wasn’t written to challenge the scientific consensus, but to meet it halfway. I needed to speak to those who feel time as I do: fractured, heavy, distorted, sometimes too fast and sometimes like it’s not moving at all. I wrote this to bridge the cold objectivity of equations with the subjective weight of experience. Because those equations, even the most accurate ones, don’t show you what it feels like to survive a year you can’t remember, or how five quiet minutes with your kid can stretch into something eternal.

In that spirit, I tried to create something of my own. A series of models. Equations that reflect not just gravitational mass or atomic clocks but trauma, memory, clarity, and presence. My versions aren’t “right” in the traditional sense. They won’t get me a Nobel Prize or land me a job at CERN. But maybe they’ll help you name something you’ve been feeling without knowing how to explain it.

That was the goal. To make sense of the fog of Time. To give structure to something that still defies structure. Time is absurd and so is the fact that we’re here. Trying to understand it with tools we built while hurt, healing, and human.

If any part of this helped you see Time differently, or feel less alone in how you experience it, then it was worth writing. If it stirred something in you, share it. Not for the clicks. Not for algorithms. For connection. For conversation. For truth.

Because at the end of the day, the question of Time isn’t about clocks or equations. It’s about what it means to be here at all. And for that, we need both science and philosophy.

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Preview of Part 3: Time Wearing a Mask

Next week, we step away from equations and into metaphor. I’ll be exploring time not as a measurement, but as a character, shifting between person, place, and thing. This next essay gave me a different kind of understanding. Not the scientific kind, but something more personal. Through language and description, I began to uncover the roles time plays in our lives, the masks it wears, the weight it carries, and the way it moves through us without asking permission. It’s a deeper, more symbolic take, but one that helped me see time not just as something we track, but something we live with.

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