No Time Like the Present

I got my seniors amped up for graduation today by reading them an excerpt from Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time-- a book connects perfectly to both Hamlet and their own lives, as it points out that though we want the universe to be comprised of things on an orderly timeline, it is actually composed of relativistic occurrences and events, in constant fluctuation and change . . . a war is not a thing, it's a long sequence of events; a cloud is not a thing, it's a bunch of condensation in the air; even things are not things, they are only semi-permanent perturbations of quantum forces, and-- of course-- a person is not a thing, though we are under the illusion that we are a character, an entity, a static personality but we are actually a sequences of events and circumstances with some distorted memories that connect us to the past events that were experienced by a few of our molecules (but not most of them, as they are constantly regenerating) and so while Hamlet starts the play with the ultimate ambition: "The time is out of joint, O cursed spite that I was ever born to set it right" he ends the play realizing that "we defy augury" and that there is no sorting out time and the universe, because-- as Rovelli explains-- the time is always out of joint-- time is different in every location and just a construct designed to give us some idea of the constant flux and change in the universe . . . Hamlet know this by the end of the play when he says "If it be now, tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all" and that is the attitude the seniors must adopt, high school is over, all is change, flexibility is paramount, and "the readiness is all."