Looking on line today, I see that because of variations in the earth's rotation around the sun, scientists are adding a leap second to the atomic clock on June 30th. At 8pm Eastern time, the most accurate clock in the world will be 61 seconds long and not 60. This will keep the atomic clock in synch with mean solar time. Such leap seconds happen periodically. But will anyone notice? Scientists say that over the course of one's lifetime, 60 leap seconds might be added. So if no changes were made to our atomic clock, that would mean the sun would get up one minute later at death than it did a birth. It seems like such a minuscule thing. But in a day and age where all computers are networked, it is important that time is kept as accurately as possible. And so tomorrow a leap second will be added.
What can be accomplished in a second? Not a lot. I can type 60 words per minute so I can type one word in a second. A car travelling at 100 kilometres per hour can go 27.77 meters in a second. Now that is a distance but if you are on a 500 kilometre journey, 28 metres is pretty small. A second is enough to say one or two words or to take one or two steps. And unless we are an olympic athlete competing in a race who think in one one hundredths of a second, seconds often go by without notice.
But I think each second is important. Life is limited. We do not know how long we have. And if our lives are to have significance, we need to try to make those seconds count. A phrase from Ralph Waldo Emerson that I have posted on this site says that for every minute you are angry, you lose 60 seconds of joy. Those who are prone to procrastinate, lose out. "I will begin making that big change in my life tomorrow, or maybe next week, or how about next year" means that they lose time to make those changes that might benefit my life. Each second is a gift. How will you spend your leap second tomorrow? Blessings
