“There are two types of time: clock time and year time. Year time is not real time — it’s just an illusion. You have to grow up or grow old obviously, but you don’t really have to in your mind. In your mind, you can go back to any time you want.” — My 8-year old son
Yesterday, I asked my 8-year-old son to look for the TV remote.
He blinked at me, expression unbothered — enlightened, even- and effortlessly turned to Alexa and said loudly “Alexa! Turn on Fire TV.”
Like magic, Alexa responds “Okay” and the TV switches on. Grabbing his dad’s phone, he casually navigated apps on the TV like a miniature Silicon Valley CEO. The act of ‘looking for the remote’ — once a noble household quest involving upturning cushions and mild accusations — has now been dismissed as an outdated ritual, like dial-up or patience.
At that moment, I sat there, exclaiming how fabric of time apparently had moved on. I hadn’t. A smart speaker became a power button. A smartphone became a remote. “Am I too old for this?”
My son paused, gave me a calm, almost spiritual look, and said, “There are two types of time: clock time and year time. Year time is not real time — it’s just an illusion. You have to grow up or grow old obviously, but you don’t really have to in your mind. In your mind, you can go back to any time you want.”
Meanwhile, I’m still standing in the middle of the living room holding throw pillows and contemplating why this tiny person was simultaneously Yoda, Neo, and Jeff Bezos.
Because when I was eight, the “remote” was me. I was the remote. My parents would summon me from across the house just to change the channel manually on a fuzzy Panasonic TV with faux-wood panelling.
There was no pause button. Live TV was law. If nature called, you sprinted to the loo during the ads. You trained your bladder to sync with commercial breaks like some sort of broadcast-synchronized monk.
Missed a moment? Too bad. It was gone. There was no record button. You’d just have to piece together the storyline like a Cold War spy decoding intercepted radio chatter.
But now — time, apparently, is fluid. Illusory. Optional.
Why look for the remote when you can summon technology with your voice? Why grow old, when you can mentally time-travel back to your Pokémon Prime whenever responsibilities knock?
And here I am — asking what even is time while using my phone as a flashlight to search for a remote that no longer matters.
He says ‘year time isn’t real’ — and you know what? Maybe he’s right. Maybe all this “growing up” and “aging” is just external clockwork ticking away. Because in your mind, you really can go back to any moment. You can be five years old eating cereal on the floor. You can be ten, fast-forwarding through VHS tapes to get to the good part. You can be fourteen, waiting for Friends to start, timing your snacks with the ad breaks. You can be seventeen, growing a beard, and still waiting for your internet modem to screech its way online.
Time is bendable in your mind. But try telling that to my knees every time I get off the sofa.
Still — when my son speaks like that, I almost believe he’s cracked some cosmic code. That he’s already living outside the limits of “year time.” And that, maybe, just maybe, I’ll stop looking for that remote. Because it turns out, I was the one out of sync all along.
Maybe the remote isn’t lost. Maybe it just doesn’t matter anymore — not because we’ve outgrown it, but because we’ve evolved beyond it. We carry time inside us now. The good bits, the weird bits, the ones that made us.
And maybe, when my son bypasses the search entirely and just speaks to a machine, he’s not being lazy. He’s just reminding me: you don’t have to do it the old way to remember who you were. Because time may be an illusion, but nostalgia? That’s real. That’s the closest thing to a working time machine I’ve found.
In your head, there’s no ageing, no deadlines, no disappearing remotes. Just snapshots on loop. Lo-fi memories rewound and replayed on instinct. I can be in the 90s with a single smell — that dusty scent of a school classroom, or the old newspaper whiff of mom’s kitchen cupboards. I can see a photo, a toy, a bit of old pixelated brand’s logo, and suddenly I’m sat cross-legged on the floor, arguing with my grandpa on who gets to choose what channel to watch. (please, not News channel again!)
He’s right, in his strange, wise, 8-year old way: you have to grow up, and yes, you’ll grow old — but in your mind, you don’t have to. In your mind, Time is elastic. Time slips. It loops. It folds in on itself like a pop-up book.
Maybe this is what my son means when he says we don’t have to grow up in our minds. Because while the outside world marches on — with smarter tech, vanishing remotes, and children who speak to Alexa like she’s part of the family — inside, I can pause, rewind, and relive.
So no, year time isn’t real.
What’s real is hearing the first few notes of a song and being transported to the 80s. What’s real is the way a laugh from your childhood still echoes in your memory like it just happened. What’s real is I can be six again, holding my mum’s saree’s drape while choosing an ice-cream flavour like it was a major life decision. What’s real is remembering where the remote used to be, even if we no longer need it.
And maybe that’s the real magic — not the apps or the voice commands or the screens that follow us from room to room — but this:
That we carry time inside us.
And if we listen closely, we can go anywhere.
No remote required.