One can read the rings of trees, the scales of fish, the layers in earth or ice, and meet the past. Dinosaurs once existed on the earth, but they don't anymore. I have been a baby, a child, a teenager; once young, now I am older.
Humans have made time pieces and calendars to help them tell and keep a record of time. Something like 7,000 years ago people in India studied the postions of stars and sun for the purposes of religion and astrology; perhaps they constructed sun dials. Early Egyptians and Babylonians used a water clock to measure time. The Egyptians also developed a solar calendar. Persians and Sumerians used a sand filled hour glass. These days we can use our computers and mobiles to mark dates, get reminders and check hours and minutes.
Other creatures besides humans have a sense of time. Birds know when to fly south and when to return. Bears know when to hibernate and when to wake. Do they tell time by the sun, by the weather or some internal mechanism of their bodies. Certain flowers close in the afternoon, others bloom all day. If you put feed into a bird feeder at the same time each day, birds will soon show up at that time regularly.
The earth rotates on a schedule -- we call it a day, though it could be called anything else. A year is the approximate time it takes for the earth to rotate around the sun, though it`s actually slightly longer than 365 days, which is why we invented the leap year.
When I had a full time job, my life was mainly run by the clock. I had to be at work at a certain time, had appointments, breaks for lunch, a set time to quit. Weekends were more flexible, but I still had a schedule, tasks to do, things to fit in. Now that I work mainly on my own projects, time is much more ephemeral and flexible. What does it matter whether today is Saturday or Wednesday. Just if I`ve got a dental appointment that I end up missing because I misremembered the time. But otherwise, I can get up when I like, stay in bed if it`s too cold or cloudy out, get up at 4 am if I`m wide awake and spend a while reading or writing.
For the Priaha people (they call themselves `The Straight Ones`) of Brazil, apparently there are hardly any words related to time. They have no past tense, but live in the present and from personal experience. They also tell no stories.
I couldn`t live without stories, so prefer to embrace past, present and future. I need the fourth dimension. But within those cultures that use time, not all are as bound by the clock as many North Americans or Europeans. Time doesn`t fly for everyone; though it can soar, flow or eddy, and carry us whereever we like.
