Time Keeps on Slipping

Tao had a interesting post on our experience of time. Rather than fill up his comment space with something that may take it on a tangent, I thought I'd post some personal observations here.

This is just an exploration. It seems time accelerates for two major reasons and there is one way to slow it down that most of us know but few of us practice.

One reason it seems to accelerate may be that the relative ratio of any unit of time gets smaller as we get older. When we're 4, a summer is 1/16th of our entire life and goes on forever. By the time we hit 30, the same summer is only 1/120th of our life so far. A much smaller fraction. And since time seems to be more about our subjective experience than the wall clock, the context of this accumulated experience seems to carry greater and greater weight. But not just because of its quantity.

Another factor, one more insidious, is our habits. The other day at a restaurant I watched two three year olds from different tables dashing around in different directions until their paths crossed. They both froze, wide-eyed, watching each other intensely. Their worlds had stopped while lost in wonder about this other little person that just materialized in their world-view. I reflected on how two adult strangers interact on the street, with their automatic adjustments, quick classifications, and intent on each getting to their own destinations, and it provided quite a contrast.

As we age, I think, there is a tendency to see less and less of what is in front of us. We already have most everything figured out and our thoughts and emotions tend to run on autopilot most of the time. We are seldom *here* in the present, our minds are caught up with where we are going, or how it compares to where we have been. When we do arrive at someplace, a quiet dinner with family, sipping a cup of coffee watching the sun rise or set, we may dwell in the moment for a small fraction of time before we are thinking of other things. When we hear or see new things, often before we can even explore the experience, our own opinions and points of view come rushing in to tell us this is just something we have already heard or seen. At best a slight variation or a new piece of trivia to file away. Like cows that regurgitate grass to chew on the same cud again and again.

So where these explorations tend to lead me is not that time is limited. We really only have one moment in time and that is now. That's all we've ever had, it's all we'll ever have. What's limited is our ways of experiencing this moment. We often want things to be a certain way before we are comfortable there. But when they do get that way, we're very shortly looking for the next moment to experience in the future, or comparing it with a moment in the past. And like skipping rocks on the surface of a lake, we only really experience these points where we touch the surface and are fully present; when the rock is in flight, we are mostly unconscious, living habitually, and our subjective time seems to disappear as we glide over the waters of awareness.

A wise spirtual traveler once remarked that most humans live their lifes asleep. And when we are sleeping, large chunks of time pass in an instant. I sometimes remember this when I feel time slipping and indeed, in all these instances this has happened, I realize I was truly asleep(!) Then I stare at myself in the mirror, one three year old to another, marveling at the infinity in the moment when we are all here and life is a mystery to be experienced rather than a problem to be solved.