I've decided to figure out a "Time Slowing Formula."
See, I'm on this locomotive that seems to be speeding up, the trees and people are whizzing by in the windows, and the cliff is approaching.
Time to slow it down.
So....not watching T.V.? Not spending so much time online?
Does adding activities slow time, or speed it up? Does even being aware of the passage of time slow it down or speed it up?
When I was a kid, the summer seemed endless. I don't remember thinking much about the passage of time, except the looming school year; which I could usually ignore until the last couple of weeks.
As a kid I wasted time profligately. I had no awareness that lazing about the house, or walking around the woods could possibly be a waste.
Maybe it's the very thought that one needs to use time "productively" that makes it seem to slip away.
Does spending more time with people make time faster or slower? Time alone? Quiet time?
Could setting time aside to contemplate time make it slow down? To what purpose?
I used to be willing to waste an entire day or two on hangovers...heck, having a cold seemed a real luxury, a guilt free vacation, with sniffles.
Car trips always seem to drag....are we there yet?
Does spending time with loved ones speed time up? Doesn't absence of loved ones make time drag?
Is extending time even the proper question? Isn't it the quality of time that counts? After all, being in pain, or waiting for someone to pick one up, can make time drag endlessly. Not something to pursue. On the other hand, having fun is a sure fire way of having time speed up.
In fact, anything that I get engrossed in speeds time. I can remember sitting down to write on my novels, and looking up to realize 4 hours had passed.
I suppose being in pain and going on long car trips with boring people would really slow time down. Hmmmmmm.....
How about spending less time in other people's heads -- books, movies, T.V. and more time in my own? And yet when I was a kid, I read endlessly. I watched as much T.V. as I was allowed.
I think just getting out in nature is one sure-fired way to get time to slow down. Spending time in the garden.
That and eliminating T.V.
Any other ideas?
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2 comments:
"When I was a kid, the summer seemed endless."
Ain't that the truth. When I was a kid the seasons and years went by very slowly and the days went by in a blink. Now it's just the opposite.
I think overcrowding your days with activities and "busy-ness" makes time "speed up." One reason the years and seasons seemed long when we were kids might have been that we had a lot of free time. (Not so true of today's kids, unfortunately -- they seem to have every minute of their lives scheduled.) We were able to (more or less) do what we wanted to do when we wanted to do it, especially when school was out.
"I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass." -- Walt Whitman
I think part of it is just perception. When you are 10 years old, a year would be 10 percent of your life to date. When you are 50 a year is 2% of your experiences. As such I would expect that the perception of the passage of time has as more to do with age, memory, etc. then it does with any specifc activity or how busy we are. Being busy might impact how fast we feel time is passing at a particular instance, but when one looks in general at how fast a year seems to have gone buy, that I think is more related to age, memories, etc.
That change in perception as we age seems to be pretty consistent across the population.
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