Time- Both Fast and Slow
July 16, 2008 – 5:50 pmAs a short follow-up to my first post on the concept of time, I wanted to briefly delve into experiencing time both on a “micro” and “macro” level. I am sure some of you can relate.
I have always been intrigued at how my perspective of time changes depending on what lens I am looking through. Whether it’s been a school year, a summer job, or a few months before a vacation, I find myself looking back and thinking that time passed rather quickly. At the macro or long term-term level, time finds a sneaky way to escape my grasp and senses. This is regardless of how far off the end of the school year seemed at the beginning, how long a ten-week summer job felt at the onset, or how interminable the time before a vacation appeared.
At the micro or short-term level, the above lengths of time almost always seemed to be moving slowly. When I focused on each hour, day, or week, an entire school year didn’t seem like it could ever possibly end! And then magically it did.
This process has been the same in my experiences of a period of time that I was looking forward to (each year of college), and for a period of time that I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to (my summer job spent as a town worker). That first weekend of a new year in college came and went, and I would happily think to myself that there were infinite more to come. The first few weeks and weekends seemed like they were moving slowly when looked at as part of an entire year. And then the inevitable happened, year after year of college. The last weekend arrived, and I just quite couldn’t understand how.
This is a rather confusing concept to write about, but I hope it has made some sense. I can visualize in my mind exactly what I am trying to say, but the words to describe the visualization haven’t come easily. Maybe time is simply something that is easier to experience than to describe!
One Response to “Time- Both Fast and Slow”
so when i woke up the other day from a crazy dream, i thought of your blog posting on how time flies and wanted to make a comment. so what do u think when u apply this concept to dreams? cuz in the case with dreams, it is the complete opposite. in reality, dreams are only supposed to be from 5-45 minutes when it seems like it lasted an eternity.
“Often, the subjective time spent in a dream is much longer. One possible explanation for this time-stretch effect is that dreams are combined from pieces that have their own different setting intime. You first dream of something that occurred a year ago, then of something that occurred just recently, mix them up abit and are left with the remembrance of a dream that lasted a year.” (google search explanation)
so applying this concept in reverse or in the ‘time-shrinking effect’, reality (when we are completely conscious of time versus when we are dreaming we are not) is combined from all the random events we can remember (in the past months, year, etc). we summarize all those events in a matter of minutes, since we no longer feel the actual physical energy/time spent on every single moment in the past, getting the impression that all those things happened so fast?
just another one of my ramblings..
By CW on Jul 23, 2008