Some Random Thoughts on the Way to Rakkasah

Killing time on a delayed train to New Brunswick I came across this article about the perecetion of time: How to Live Forever! Or Why Habits are a Curse.

Appropriate, huh?

At that particular moment, it seemed like we'd been waiting for ages when in fact it had barely been ten minutes. Now as I write this over a half-hour later my contentedly occupied mind barely felt the moments pass.

It's often joked that the length of a minute depends on which side of the bathroom door you are on, but the article's author observes that time is also lengthened or condensed during activites of non-expertise. When one is "expert" at physical routines, our focus is no longer on the minutae of the tasks but the meaning behind them. Indeed, focusing on the details can impair the "expert" level of performance -- it will also make time seem to pass more slowly.

The author finds an interesting irony in our culture, which prizes both expertise AND perpetually vital youth, and so suggests changing our familiar routines and taking up new and challenging activities could make each day seem like an eternity of perpetual youth.

Cute, huh?

But beneath this glib thesis is perhaps a valuable insight: Getting out of our practiced routines forces us to connect with the physical world in ways that can be uncomfortable, but will give greater richness and depth to each moment (and, yes, I think this holds true even for the bathroom scenario.), that could both make time pass more slowly (i.e. richly) and more quickly.

When we are comfortable, too much at ease in our well practiced, routine lives, we are not quite in our bodies and not quite connecting to the world around us. (This point is made beautifully in the classic arty film My Dinner with Andre: "When you're just operating by habit, then you're not really living."). But in order to live full, rich, engaged lives we must stay in contact with the world around us and all of its attendant joys and discomforts.

And contrary to the author's observations, this richness of experience is key to feeling youthful and vital, and has little to do with the sense of the passage of time, but rather with a feeling of engagement with the world.

The best example of this is any activity in which we feel passionately interested -- regardless of whether we are "expert" at it. Then time can seem to disappear, yet the accomplishment is deeply felt, so time passes with a visceral richness -- both quickly and slowly at once.