Time: tough to pin down both in concept and reality. As a child, we see the future as a vast array of opportunities with a countless amount of time that lies before us. We tackle our days knowing we will live another. It comes down to the perceptions we have of time. Our brains are constantly gathering sensory information and our collective mental lives attempt to perceive or interpret what makes sense, what seems real in that moment.
Sometimes our perception of things can be 'off.' Take optical illusions, for example. We 'think' we see what we see, but really it's a misconception of what is. My parents, on one of our family vacations, took us to see this normal looking cabin in the woods. I can't recall the actual place, but I thought, 'What's the big deal?' I walked into the room and it seemed I was walking at a very steep angle - I felt like I was going to fall over! With buckled legs I reached for a railing on the wall to steady myself. The guide at the cabin said it was this mysterious force, some magnetic field playing a trick on gravity. After the experience the guide tried to explain, but I couldn't get my young head around the concept.
The room was built on a slight angle, and things were nailed down as level, but since we expected to walk straight, the mixed signals of information coming through our senses made us think we were going to fall over. Our eyes and bodies were sending misconstrued signals to our brain! Our perception was not the reality. Experiencing time, through the senses, is often distorted because of the context of when we are experiencing it. We all have a need to construct the world in a meaningful way, and time is a big part of that construction.
We expect time to progress in a certain way. We make assumptions that it has different intervals depending on when we are living it. I taught Psychology. I would do a simple experiment with the students to get them to understand this disconnect between how time doesn't change, but we perceive it to either go faster or slower depending on what and when we experience it. I instructed them to sit and look ahead until I said, "ok." They had to be absolutely quiet. Meanwhile, on my wrist watch I was keeping time of an interval of 3 minutes. After, when I asked, "How long do you think that silence lasted?" Many proffered answers. Many answers were that it was over the three minutes, and practically all said the word "seemed" when deeming it longer. In contrast, I had them find and circle all the tiny flies with one wing as oppose to two winged flies. There were hundreds on the page. After three minutes I called "time!" That "seemed" shorter than the silence-they couldn't believe it was the same amount of time...the question is why?
There was this Neuro-physicist interviewed on a TV program. I didn't catch his name. His theory, when asked about why time seemed to go faster or slower, said it had to do with how we subconsciously perceive time over the course of our life. Think of a lifespan with the numerical value of 100. Each decade equals 1/10. Let's say when we were 10 years old, our perception of life is that we still have 9/10ths to go! That's a chunk of time. When we turn 40, we have 6/10ths of life to go, so time because of that equation, seems to go at a faster pace the closer we get to the full sum of 100.
Students, especially those who are seniors, haven't even turned over the fraction of 2/10ths yet. Be smart and realize that even though time is constant you'll think it inexhaustible, thus perceiving it as slow. It's not progressing any slower. While you can, create as many moments of vitality as possible. The older you get, the more you'll want to hold on to your youth and the energy that makes success possible.
Some of F. Scott's Fitzgerald's characters portray a sort of courage that it takes to not waste youth. Have a heart that cannot be relinquished. Young or old(er), there is something to be said for maintaining a child-like spirit and knowing with maturity, and yes, time, that life has its immense possibilities...an unfolding of wonder that comes like the morning sun...