Time

Why is it that we humans have the innate ability to change the rate of time, yet have absolutely no ability to use it to our advantage? As near as I can tell we begin doing it at birth and continue constantly manipulating it until we take our last breath. Impossible you say. "What big bowl of illegal substance have you been smoking?"you ask. Let me explain.

First let’s start out with our simple forms of time alteration. These are available to us at an early age and continue with us as we grow older expanding in permutations but not complexity. We may have more variables but the underlying theme is the same.

Like, anticipation. This time altering ability comes with us right out of the womb. Usually in the basic forms of: hunger, love and other needs. Time begins to slow for a baby as its empty stomach yearns to be filled and it anticipates food. Or its bladder is full and it will soon need to be relieved. And of course the anticipation of love to alleviate loneliness.

These remain with us our entire lives. "Man I can’t wait to get home to supper tonight, we’re having steaks!" "As soon as I finish this I’m going to have to go to the bathroom." "It’s going to be so much fun when Grandma comes to visit, I miss her so much." We all know that anticipation of such things can bring time to a virtual stand still. Why is that?

And why is it that waiting can put the brakes on time even harder than anticipation? After waiting all day for the special dinner it seems to take even longer when you get home and actually start preparing it. Especially when you can smell it cooking. Or when you finally get to the bathroom you can hear time screech to a stop while you have to wait for the person in front of you to finish up. That waiting for Grandma to show up from the short trip from the airport takes more time than the week you waited for her to get here after she called to say she was going to come. In small children this type of time alteration can most accurately be summed up as the "Waiting for Christmas" syndrome. We all have it, it just changes it’s presentation based on the situation at hand.

Of course we also start early with the ability to accelerate time as well. It is harder to define in early stages of life but is easily recognized later as the "Just five more minutes!" pleads of children everywhere. This speed up of time is the exact opposite of the anticipatory slow down. You’re having so much fun that time flies. "It can’t be time to go, we just got here." "Wow, is it bedtime already?" And it just gets worse.

As we get older this subtle increase in the speed of time starts to effect even larger amounts of it. I have noticed that while my days seem about the same length overall, my weeks seem slightly shorter, my months slightly shorter still and the years go by in no time. When I was a child a summer lasted long enough that I was at risk of being bored before it was over. Now as a parent the summers seem to last about two weeks.

Speaking of boredom, that is a time decelerator in a category all by itself. There is no passage of time like time passed while bored. I imagine that is why we all try to avoid it so much. It can drive you crazy. Sometimes it is even used as punishment or torture. Just say no to boredom.

While simple time compression/decompression is common there is a rarer, more complex form of time disruption that we humans also have at our disposal. The way time slows to a crawl in some situations. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing.

When time goes into slow motion so you can see every lace and read the entire label on the football you just threw as you realize it is going to break the living room window and cause you to be grounded for life. And have to pay for it out of your allowance. Or when you get older and can count and define every bug on the grill of the other car as it heads towards you right before impact. As you see your child about to get hurt and can do absolutely nothing about it. This is when slow time really sucks. You get to see everything. More than is possible under normal circumstances, but are powerless to affect it. Not good.

Sometimes it isn’t so bad though. In fact it can be great. Like when you can see every stitch on the baseball and have all the time in the world to line up on it and hit a home run. When you are working on a project and all the pieces start to fall into place and everything suddenly gets easy and when you finish only a surprisingly short amount of time has passed. These examples of slow time seem to be more easily recognized while in the midst of physical activity because of the contrast to the realm outside of "you".

I think that both the good and bad slow time are two heads of the same coin and that the common denominator is concentration or focus. Can you honestly say that when faced with eminent calamity you are not fully focused? To the complete exclusion of everything else. I think you are. I mean danger (real or perceived) really gets your attention doesn’t it?

When you look at good slow time it usually comes when you are what is commonly referred to as "in the zone". What is this "zone"? A state of total concentration isn’t it. You are singularly focused on the task at hand. Gurus talk of ways to get in a focused state. Hucksters sell programs to attain it. We all want it, yet we already have it. It’s just hard to get to.

Which brings me back to where I started. Wouldn’t it be nice if we really could completely and accurately control this innate ability inside of all of us? Waiting in line could seem to take seconds instead of hours. We could affect the outcomes of bad situations. We could "zone in" on the things we enjoy and do them consistently at our best. We could make Christmas come tomorrow and summer last all year. Sigh... If wishes were horses...