GREY MUTTER: Everything is instant these days and we are not taking the time to just take a breath and experience the ‘now’, writes Lance Fredericks.
THIS past week, I started seriously considering attaching a solid rail to my desk where I work … and maybe one to my office chair. You know, something like some guest houses have in their bathrooms so that their patrons can have something firm to hold on to if they feel themselves teetering off balance.
Why? Well, it should be obvious. This week I realised that though we do not realise it, the rotation of the earth must have sped up, and probably by quite a bit. How many of our readers, I wonder, have noticed that instead of a day being 24 hours long as it used to be a few years ago, these days our days are more like eight and sometimes even as little as six hours in length?
Still not convinced? How about the fact that weeks are just three days long nowadays? We go from Friday to Monday in a heartbeat, and suddenly it’s Thursday again.
And as for months? … bah! Just the other day it was 2022 and I was trying to formulate some good New Year’s resolutions for 2023, and now I look up and there’s already Christmas decorations up in some stores. Though the tinsel is subtle at the moment, it’s there.
Let me put it this way: As of today, there are roughly only 96,000 minutes until Christmas. And though you may argue that having close to six million seconds available means plenty of time, you have to admit, it’s a bit scary.
However, though we may notice THAT time is flying, it makes no logical sense WHY it’s happening. After all, with all our modern conveniences we should be zipping through our days with at least a few hours to spare – HOURS!
I mean though I am not an out-and-out ‘ou ballie’, I grew up without many of the modern conveniences that people find indispensable today.
I even remember a time before we had an electric stove in our home, when we had a coal stove in the kitchen. Heating milk “quickly” by nuking it in a microwave? Forget about it! You’d have to wait for the milk to heat up; which it did … eventually.
Yet, after ‘brekkies’ or tea, there was an entire day – hours and hours – ahead of you. But these days time is just zooming along! And yet, with it having flown, I still have plenty of memories of friends, family, situations and episodes that I experienced over the swiftly passing years.
Wondering how this could be, I did some reading and I learned that the manner in which we remember events might influence our perception of time. Our clearest memories shape our understanding of the passage of time and for many people the period between ages 15 and 25, known as the ‘reminiscence bump’, is associated with the highest concentration of vivid memories.
Most people had the most fun in their lives during this period, and therefore this may explain why time appears to have sped up as we moved away from this pivotal phase in our lives.
And here’s why: Our subjective experience of time can be influenced by our focus, physical condition, and emotional state. For instance, when we concentrate deeply or when we are bored, time can just drag along.
Remember how when we were little, how we were completely absorbed in the games or activities we were engaged in? That’s why days were longer then – we were in the moment. We also took long trips by car with only an FM radio for entertainment … that’s the definition of boredom!
Apparently during moments of multitasking or divided attention – a state in which we find ourselves constantly these days – time can seem to pass rapidly, potentially because we pay less attention to its progression when we have too much going on.
Our focus is also being scattered because of the many ‘time-saving’ technologies and devices we are using, tempting us to try to fit way too much into a day. Everything is instant these days and we are not taking the time to just take a breath and experience the ‘now’.
For example, our days have been so busy of late we don’t even realise that it was back in July 2013 that President Jacob Zuma, at a press conference held at the Union Buildings in Pretoria first announced that our city’s varsity would be the ‘Sol Plaatje University’.
To me it doesn’t seem like a decade ago.
Jean de La Bruyère said: “Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity”. I think I am guilty of that.
So ultimately, the question we could be asking is: Can we, even now, ‘slow time down’ and make our lives more sedate?
Apparently we may be able to. The key may lie in learning to focus on, and enjoy, the moments more than we have been doing. Also, if we make a point of improving our cognitive abilities, by working on getting better at thinking and remembering; reading books and writing summaries is a great exercise that can help us to be more focused and time would seem to be passing more slowly.
Ultimately it seems that making a bit of effort to enjoy ‘this moment’ could help us get to a point where we could slowly even make time itself feel less rushed.
Oh, and just in case it flies by too fast … Happy New Year!
