Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. ~William James

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Time and its "Relatives"


All time is not created equal.  There are minutes and hours that draaaggggggggg by, and others that seem to be gone before they're here.  As Albert Einstein said
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.
So now that I've mastered the theory of relativity (and who knew it would be so simple?), here are a few time distortions I've experienced personally.  Each experience or description is associated with the rate at which time seems to pass when engaged in the associated activity.

Reading, as in Proust's amazing description--FAST
And as each hour struck, it would seem to me that a few moments only had passed since the hour before; the latest would inscribe itself close to its predecessor on the sky's surface, and I was unable to believe that sixty minutes could have been squeezed into the tiny arc of blue which was comprised between their two golden figures.  Sometimes it would even happen that this precocious hour would sound two strokes more than the last; there must then have been an hour which I had not heard strike; something that had taken place had not taken place for me; the fascination of my book, a magic as potent as the deepest slumber, had deceived my enchanted ears and had obliterated the sound of that golden bell from the azure surface of the enveloping silence.   [Remembrance of Things Past]
Reading Proust--FAST (Because it takes a LONG time)
Sitting in meditation--SLOW
Lying in an MRI machine--Way SLOWER
Sitting at a traffic light when you're late--FASTER (paradoxically)
Waiting for a table when you're starving--SLOW
Waiting for your food to arrive when you're starving--EVEN SLOWER
The end of a difficult pregnancy--SLOWER
In labor--REALLY SLOW
Late for work--FAST
Ready to leave work--SLOW
Stuck in a boring meeting--SLOOOOWWWWW
After pressing the snooze button on my alarm--FAST
Working out on a stationary bike, for a set time--SLOW
Trying to finish a blog post when I need to be leaving for somewhere else--VERY FAST

What are some of your examples?

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