Time Is Moving Too Fast And Too Slow
And this should stop.
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this, but time is moving too fast and too slow. Last week took multiple weeks to conclude, and today, as of this writing, it is 11:52 a.m. and I have done nothing when just minutes ago it was 6:58 a.m. and I had ahead of me a day full of potential. This should stop.
How to stop it? Well, I don’t know. We’re figuring this out together. I guess the first step is determining the cause. Life is a ceaseless hellscape; we are provided a constant stream of terrifying new facts to consume throughout each day; Donald Trump is likely going to serve at least four years as President of the United States. Those are probably some of the reasons. The indeterminate length adding to the slowness, the fast pace of new crushing hell information adding to the speed.
There is also this reason that we all know, but that I will quote from Psychology Today so I have a source and so that you might believe me, as I know you are very skeptical, which is something that I like about you but that can sometimes bring tension into our relationship:
Questionnaires by psychologists have shown that almost everyone — including college students — feels that time is passing faster now compared to when they were half or a quarter as old as now. And perhaps most strikingly, a number of experiments have shown that, when older people are asked to guess how long intervals of time are, or to ‘reproduce’ the length of periods of time, they guess a shorter amount than younger people.
Interesting. I Googled “are clocks lying to us?” to see if that was the reason, but the only thing that came up with a joke called The Lie Clock. Would you like to hear it? It’s not a good joke and by the time you finish ~3 hours will have passed or maybe you will be dead, but here you go:
After a long life, and a tumultuous marriage, Stan Herman dies and arrives at the Gates of Heaven, where he sees a huge wall of clocks behind him.
He asks an angel, “What are all those clocks?”
The angel answers, “Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move.”
“Oh,” says Herman, “whose clock is that?”
“That’s Moses’ clock. The hands have never moved, indicating that he never told a lie.”
“Incredible,” says Herman. “And whose clock is that one?”
The angel responds, “That’s Abraham Lincoln’s clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life.”
“So where’s my clock?” asks Herman.
“Your clock is in God’s office. He’s using it as a ceiling fan.”
Ahaha. “Time” to get a new ceiling fan, though, unless they allow lying in Heaven. Stan Herman is dead! Or maybe Stan Herman is going to Hell? I’m not sure if they allow lying in Hell so maybe the fan will still work.
It is 1:29 p.m. now and I just started writing this five minutes ago, at 11:52 a.m. When you Google “how do we make time go slower,” this is the featured snippet:
By slowing down the perceived passage of time, you seemingly have more of it and live longer — and better.
Stop thinking of time as money (even if it is). Increasing value breeds scarcity, even if it’s just the perception of scarcity. …
Embrace novelty. …
Work smarter. …
Move. …
Disconnect. …
Plan trips. …
Go into nature.
I was hoping there would be a similar featured snippet for “how do we make time go faster” and that we could just combine them to fix our problem, but there is no such snippet. God damnit. However, the second link offered is to this article that my friend Jim wrote!
I love to see friends pop up online. Here is a quote from this article:
So the answer, it seems, is to follow whatever activities really get you lost. I think that means something purposeful and not mundane. Though it may also be mundane. Getting into that sort of state — flow, what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “the secret to happiness” — where you’re totally lost in the moment. When you’re spending more time there, it tends to mean you’re less stressed and more productive, and more likely to be doing something purposeful. Something that makes you feel you’re having an impact on other human lives, ideally in a positive way.
Thank you, Jim. Jim is a doctor, technically, and I like to tell people that when they meet him for the first time. “Jim is a doctor — technically.”
So, I don’t know. It seems like the answer is to do something you like in the woods? I guess this is how we can fix the problem of time simultaneously moving too fast and too slow:
- Throw your computer out the window.
- Quit your job.
- Move far away.
- Never look back.
- Find your true love!
??? 🙂 That’s my best guess.
I love you,
Kelly