Time, according to general relativity, is a smooth continuum woven into the fabric of space. It bends near heavy stars, stretches around black holes, and moves forward at a steady pace of one second per second.
This entire framework falls apart the moment you heat leftover soup.
Anyone who has watched a digital timer count down from thirty seconds knows that seconds are not created equal. The first ten seconds pass with reasonable velocity. The next ten slow to a crawl. The final three seconds exist in a temporal eddy so dense that civilizations could rise, develop poetry, and collapse into dust before the display changes from 0:02 to 0:01.
This discrepancy suggests that time is not governed by fundamental physical constants, but rather by an immensely pedantic administrative department that doles out moments based on how urgently you need them to pass.
When you are enjoying a pleasant dinner with friends, the time allocation office approves seconds in bulk packages, burning through entire hours while you are reaching for the bread basket. But when you are standing barefoot on cold tile waiting for soup to become lukewarm, the office insists on manually approving every microsecond through three separate subcommittees.
We like to imagine ourselves as masters of time because we built atomic clocks that vibrate billions of times per second. In truth, we are merely passengers in a temporal carriage whose driver occasionally stops to check his mail while we are trying to warm up last night’s stew.