D. Graham Burnett

“The only reason for time', Einstein supposedly mused, 'is so that everything doesn't happen at once'. Interestingly, though, it seems nobody can find where he said that. Which raises the question of space. Within it, things are permitted to drift apart. This cleverly resolves the obvious problem of everything being crowded into a single hyper-dense dimensionless point in the cosmic void, and it also affords every blade of grass, every grain of sand, its peculiar dignity - its bold specificity and heroic autonomy. But there are costs: with space, it becomes possible to get lost; loneliness and disorientation are born. We suffer with these things, and can feel the stuff of the world similarly afflicted - what, in the end, is not, in some sense, out of place? What potsherd on this planet does not quietly keen for its kin?
All of which invites a gentle revision of the pseudo-Einstein quip: perhaps the real reason for time is so that everything has an opportunity to find everything else.”
― D. Graham Burnett