Time.

The four-letter word that rules our universe and everything within it. A word that carries the weight of existence itself.  

It's a concept so fundamental to our reality that it's almost impossible to imagine - well, a time before time. A life without it. Yet, for such an ubiquitous element of our world and of our everyday life on earth, time remains surprisingly elusive and complex.  

Let’s linger in physics and science for just a bit - is time simply the fourth dimension, forming the fabric of spacetime. Is it just an important variable in physical laws with a crucial role in describing natural phenomena (not to digress or bore you, but think for a moment of Newton’s Second Law of Motion, without time as a variable, we couldn't describe acceleration…) 

Or is time, for you, mostly a practical measure of the sequence events and the duration between them. An essential way to quantify change or the lack thereof? The kettle not boiling and then boiling.  

You may even prefer time as more of a relative quantity. Perhaps, like Einstein you hold fast that time is not absolute but can stretch and contract depending on speed and gravity.  

For me, in terms of language, time is a trusted workhorse. It functions as both noun and verb, and being responsible for many time-honoured phrases, truly explains our somewhat dysfunctional relationship with it. We kill time and make time. We race against time and we cheat time. We can be ahead of our time or behind the times, or simply, out of time. Time can fly, time can drag, time can tell. Time can stand still and it can heal all wounds. Time is also money, it's of the essence, and it waits for no one.  

We always crave more of it, yet often waste it. We invent countless tools to measure and manage it, yet frequently feel controlled by it. As we navigate our temporal existence, perhaps the greatest challenge – and opportunity – is learning to make peace with time. To use it wisely, yes, but also to sometimes let it flow by unheeded, savoring the eternal now. 

In the end, this humble four-letter word encompasses nothing less than the backdrop of our entire existence – past, present, and future.