We cannot control time
Time is not constant. Ok, so it is our perception of time that changes. Sometimes it wheels by like a skier hurtling down a mountain and sometimes it drags by and even a sloth looks like it is moving quickly.
I have been thinking about time and its inevitable procession and how it interacts with my life. This year is the first where I have truly felt like an adult, despite having been one for years. I don’t know whether it is my more clear awareness of my mortality, experience of role reversal with a parent, or a greater knowledge and appreciation of what is truly important in life (I need to act on this knowledge a bit more as I am sure we all do). Maybe it is just the changes that are going on in your life and world, as you get older and you have experienced more, are more apparent.
Yesterday I was speaking to someone about how their young person was getting on at University. I thought back to when I was at Uni. In one way it seems like it was years ago, as it was, and in other respects it seems so close, I can remember walking along Otley Road singing Deacon Blue’s Dignity in the early hours, I remember the secret supply of Christmas cake under my bed so it didn’t get eaten by the ravenous flat mates when they came home drunk, the smell of joysticks and the weekend kayaking trips with the canoe club. And yes the studying.
Maybe some of my thinking has also been prompted by the news that the option of buying dewberry soap from the Body Shop, will no longer be there (not that I have since I was a teen).
It is half way through February 2024- yet only yesterday it was New Year. How did that happen? If I look at what I has happened in that time I know where the time has gone. I have not flittered it away, but it really feels like that skier started an avalanche of time and it is rapidly picking up speed. At work I feel behind in a variety of tasks for our Discovery Fund Project which is hurtling towards it’s finish line next month.
And yet, yesterday the sloth of time was out and about. The day was cold and damp and time seemed to be dragging its heels in the mud. I didn’t seem to achieve much. How come, despite feeling that every minute was being extended, I didn’t seem to make any progress? Why couldn’t I make the most of this apparent “additional” time?
I do know the answer. It is because I am struggling with knowing where I am at and what I am trying to achieve at this current time with the project. That this not knowing is both making the minutes extend and at the same time preventing me from achieving much in all of that “additional” time, despite the finish line looming.
I am lucky in that I rarely have this feeling, but that does mean I don’t have a bank of strategies to deal with it. I tried a change of location, I tried warming my very cold toes up (that did help), I tried asking for help, I tried approaching the challenge from a different angle. In the end I decided to tackle a totally none-related task and come back to the project today.- As you can see that resulted in the week notes you have just read. I also made some progress on the project this morning and time has gone quicker, but I have not got any further on the thing that was causing time to slow so much yesterday and, I believe if I look too long in that direction, I will cause time to slow again. Maybe we can control time.
