The Zen of Spacious Life – Slow Time
There is a link between time and information that can explain certain aspects of time. Let’s examine for instance, one of the rules or laws of psychological time that is time seems to slow whenever we are introduced to new experiences and environments.
The reason for this psychological phenomenon is due to the strangeness of fresh experiences allowing us to process much more information on the uptake. Another of the rules/laws is the certainty of time passing quickly during states of information absorption. This is attributable during states of absorption to the narrowing of our attention to one little point of focus and at the same time we naturally block out any peripheral information from our immediate surroundings. At the very same time all this is occurring, there is very little ‘cognitive information’ being processed in our minds, since the concentration and intense focus has quieted the normal and sometimes distracting ‘thought chatter’ of the mind.
Now on the other hand, time seems to slow in states of our perceived boredom and associated discomfort due to the fact that in these types of situations (i.e. waiting for something to do on the job etc.) our attention isn’t occupied and intensely focused, and as a result, an enormous amount of thought-chatter naturally flows through our minds, and with it a substantial amount of cognitive information.
The positive side to all this, is that if we understand exactly why time seemingly speeds up as we get older, then we most certainly aren’t helpless in our efforts to counter the effect. If we know that this is simply caused by a high-level of familiar experience, then we can increase efforts to immerse ourselves in as much newness as possible in our lives, and not limited to just new environments through the course of travel (even though travel is very important), but new challenges, situations and information, and ideas, hobbies and new skills.
Understand that as our perceived expansion of time, which we most often experience when we travel to foreign countries shows, freshness and novelty of the unfamiliar stretches time. So therefore, if we plan with regularity to treat ourselves to unfamiliar events and information, we can perceptually experience increased time in our lives, and so effectively live for ‘longer.’
The concept of time passing quickly means that if you were to experience spending all the years of your adult life doing the same ole job (like many in past generations), living in the same ole house in the same ole neighborhood, along with doing the same things with the same people in your free time, then it’s highly-predictable and inescapable that you will most certainly experience a incredibly-swift passage of time. But if you tend to routinely change jobs like most people do today, frequently travel to places you haven’t visited before, keep exploring new thoughts and ideas and periodically give yourself new fresh challenges, time will begin to pass more slowly to you. This is the way it’s possible for a person who dies prematurely before the age of 40, to live far ‘longer’ than a person who dies at the age of 80 or even 100.
strongemI took some time out for life./em/strong – James L. Brooks
strongemI want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own./em/strong – H.G. Wells
strongemIf you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?/em/strong – John Wooden
strongemIt’s my feeling that Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth./em/strong – Francois Rabelais
strongemKnow how to live the time that is given you./em/strong – Dario Fo
strongemLet him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present./em/strong – Roger Babson
strongemLose not yourself in a far off time, seize the moment that is thine./em/strong– Friedrich Schiller
strongemLost time is never found again./em/strong – Benjamin Franklin
strongemMen talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them./em/strong – Dion Boucicault
strongemMuch may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away./em/strong – Charles Caleb Colton
