Time is a funny thing. It can feel fleet­ing… or seem to drag on for­ever. How can it vary so much when we can ac­cu­rately mea­sure a minute, when an hour has 60 min­utes, and day has 24 hours?  It sounds all very nice and neat, and con­cise.  But time is not like that at all!

Per­haps it is be­cause we are so busy these days—time is of the essence you know.  It’s the one com­mod­ity that we would all like more of.  And if we were able to stretch time, would we use it dif­fer­ently?  Would we re­lax more, take our time, and en­joy life?  Or to con­tinue to fill it to the brim, liv­ing two life­times in the space of one?

Per­haps it is be­cause our life is a mea­sure­ment of time. We have a fi­nite time here in the phys­i­cal body.  So many el­ders ad­vise that life goes by fast… too fast, and that we re­ally should take the time to be pre­sent.  Every mo­ment counts.  I know that time for me seems to be fly­ing by as I get a bit older… per­haps it is the same for you?  Maybe it is the soul beck­on­ing us to get on with the busi­ness we came here for?

I don’t re­ally un­der­stand time.  Of course the log­i­cal mea­sure­ment of time is one thing, but one’s per­cep­tion of it is an­other.  I’ve sat in med­i­ta­tion, think­ing 20 min­utes had passed, only to have the clock tell me oth­er­wise. Some days 5 min­utes feels like 20, some days 90 min­utes feel like 10.   How can time seem that dif­fer­ent?

Do­ing deep clear­ing work with clients, they are of­ten sur­prised when our time is up.  How did it go by that quickly?  The clock ticks for­ward at the same rate…

I re­mem­ber work­ing at a small con­sign­ment store some years ago. I stepped out the back door one day when the wooden steps were wet and up into the air I flew.  It seemed like time slowed down, like I was float­ing and float­ing… I knew what was hap­pen­ing and tried to ad­just my body, con­cen­trat­ing on mov­ing my hands to brace my fall but it was like they were made of rub­ber, un­able to re­spond.  I was in the air for sec­onds, yet it seemed like so much longer, al­most like a dream, and then I hit the ground.  The ground brought me out of the dream; I was solidly back with a thud.

I’ve had dreams where I have lived whole life­times, rich with emo­tion and re­mem­ber­ing in­cred­i­ble de­tail… and yet chances are good that it only lasted a few mo­ments in ‘re­al’ time.

Time makes lit­tle sense to me.  In­side, I still feel like that same per­son I’ve al­ways been… that eter­nal ‘Me’ that bears wit­ness to life.  It’s not that I am the same per­son, for I have ex­pe­ri­enced tremen­dous change in my life, but the ‘Me’ that is watch­ing now still feels like the same pres­ence that watched when I was a child.  No won­der se­niors have a hard time rec­on­cil­ing their age!  Be­cause they feel the way they have al­ways felt.

Some think that time is an il­lu­sion.  I be­lieve we are eter­nal be­ings.  Per­haps time is just a con­struct to help us have a 3 di­men­sional ex­pe­ri­ence. Who knows?  But while we are here, let’s choose to make the best of it.  Take the time to play, to en­joy life, and to see beauty in the world around you.

At the end of the game, the thing that is im­por­tant about time is whether or not you are con­tent with how you used it.

Originally published in The Magic Happens: https://themagichappensnow.com/distortions-in-time/