You Are Time’s Master

We were sharing snail jokes. One of my favorites is what a snail would say if she was riding on top of a turtle. The answer I loved was “Wheeee!”

But there is another punchline to this joke. In this one, the snail says to the turtle, “Slow down you lunkhead.”

For a snail traveling at the speed of a turtle, the world would be hurtling past. Depending on the snail, she either loved it or hated it.

Time is relative.

In the Star Trek episode titled “Wink of an Eye” (1968) the Scalosians moved one hundred times faster than humans, and for Captain Kirk to see them, he had to be sped up to their frequency.

Time is relative.

And yet we allow ourselves to become slaves to it. We talk about a race against time, deadlines, and wasting time.

Blame Einstein for the phrase “time is relative.” He theorized that all motion is relative rather than absolute. In physics this concept gets complicated. But for us mere mortals it’s easy to understand because we experience it all the time.

So what is time relative to?

If we are doing something we love—and we allow ourselves to enjoy it—time moves so quickly some people even forget to eat. (That’s not me, I don’t forget to eat.) If we are bored, time moves slowly.

My mom doesn’t like Sundays, because where she lives no one visits or does anything on Sundays. With nothing different to do, Sundays move way too slowly for her. She can’t wait for Monday.

Del and I love Sundays. If at all possible we don’t talk to anyone or do anything other than what we want to do. It goes by way too fast for us.

Our perception as to what is happening during a specific period of time, makes it move faster or slower.

Since time is relative, and it is only our insistence that it has a concrete structure, why are we so attached to the concept of time? Why feel guilty about passing time, either doing something or not doing something depending on if it is a snail day or a Scalosian day since it is our perception of it which drives our experience?

The accurate measuring of time is a relatively new concept. As humans, we didn’t measure time with clocks until a few hundred years ago. We didn’t set our clocks to exact standards until trains needed to have a timetable to run effectively. They required a deadline so people would show up on time.

All businesses have deadlines. Actually, everything has a deadline. If we look at our material lives, we all are moving towards the deadline to where the portal of this lifetime closes, and another opens.

It’s how we feel about deadlines, what we do to prepare for them, and our awareness of the elasticity of what appears as time that makes all the difference.

In the show Battlestar Galactica, the phrase “it has happened before and will happen again” is a key thread that moves through the story. It’s reminding us that time is not linear. Everything is happening at the same time.

It doesn’t matter if we understand this, or even if we care about it. What matters is that we remember that we are the ones projecting time onto our lives and what we expect from ourselves. We are the masters of our perception of time.

Slow down enough to notice this. When something stressful happens that makes you want to hurry up and fix it, slow down enough to clear space for a solution to present itself.

Don’t we all hate it when a car rides our bumper putting us both at risk, because perhaps they might be a few minutes late to work? Don’t ride the bumper of what you need to get done. Make space. And remember that time is elastic.

At different times during the day, and in our lifetimes, we run at different speeds. Be aware of them. We are not slaves to time. When we are, we did it to ourselves.

It doesn’t matter if you are a snail wishing everyone else would slow down, or a snail enjoying the ride of a turtle or moving so fast most people can’t keep track of what you are up to. Doesn’t matter at all, as long as it’s not about time.

It’s about enjoying the ride, and not accepting the limitations of a concrete sense of time. What happens within a space of time is up to us, let’s find ways to enjoy every bit of it, including the deadlines.

I need deadlines to get the things done that I want to get done. I love getting things done, so I will use every trick I can to get my human resistance out of the way, and deadlines work well for me, for some things. And I always plan everything I do to be done ahead of any deadline, because I don’t work well under stress, pressure, or drama.

This is a sense of time that works well for me. Find the one that works for you. Just don’t be a slave to it.

You are time’s master, not its slave.

Control your perception of time instead of letting time control your perception, and you will be amazed how much time you have to enjoy your time.

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From The Daily Nudge: #194
When Did You First Notice That:
We are not in a race against time; we are in a race against what we expect of ourselves within that time.

TODAY’S STATEMENT:
I am present with the eternal now.