Do you ever wonder about our sense of time? It fascinates me. Most cultures refer to time spatially, as a direction, but how they do that differs a lot. We often say the future is “ahead” of us, but some cultures in South America or Vietnam may refer to the future as “behind” because it can’t be seen. Other cultures relate to the earth. In New Guinea, people may say the future is uphill, the past downhill.
Time can also be a direction. Which way is tomorrow? In English and many other languages, the future is rightward, the past leftward because we read and write to the right. In Hebrew it’s the opposite as people read and write to the left. Likewise, in Mandarin, the future is down, which follows reading and writing patterns in that language.
Our sense of time is tightly related to our feelings. Everyone’s experienced how fast time goes when doing something fun in contrast to the time drag of a boring or dreaded task.
When a crisis hits, time seems to stand still for a moment. Researchers attribute this to the brain triggering intense emotional attention to observation of details; much as a child focuses intently on simple objects. In childhood there might be more details in each moment which creates a slowed sense of time. Meditation is a major tool for helping us adults slow down.
While not scientifically conclusive, there’s a credible school of thought that the sense of time is simply faster as we age. It’s pointed out that to someone 70 years old, a day is 1/25,550 of their life. To someone 5 years old, the same day is 1/1,825 of their life. A year becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of our experience as we go through the decades.
Do you ever get frustrated with the fast pace of time? Balancing life’s demands on our time is a steady challenge for most. Many of us carry more responsibilities or expectations of work than can reasonably be accomplished. Our sense of responsibility and personal pride in a job or a task sometimes runs in conflict with the need to make room for other facets of our life. It’s hard.
Numerous retired colleagues have commented that they are so busy, they don’t know how they ever found time to work. But when they did work, they were usually very busy and had to slice and dice their time and attention to very small increments to cover everything. Maybe it’s not surprising that with those pressures lifted, other interests expand in proper order.
Sometimes it’s hard to adjust to sudden shifts between fast and slow paces. This time of year, people get excited about vacation but often have a hard time slowing down. Some feel the need to be entertained all the time. Is that a liability of our fast-paced world?
It was really hot on the 4thof July. You could feel the pace of life slow to match the heat. It felt a bit foreign, but the slow pace made a few short days feel longer. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.