When is the last time you watched time pass?

On this site, i regularly see posts about time speeding up, about perception of time, and how it is changing.

Also, I have experienced in my life many who claim that time moves faster and faster as you get older. I have definitely experienced this to an extent, the past 6 years (18-24) seemed to go by much faster than the 6 before it. Now, some claim that this is due to a given amount of time being a larger portion of your life when you're younger. Some claim that it is because when you're young, you are experiencing many "firsts" that leave a much larger impression on your brain than when they are repeated over and over throughout your life.

While time has definitely seemed to move faster as I have gotten older (although I am still relatively young), I never was quite sure what to make of it. Tonight, however, I experienced something very strange, which I have never experienced before. Here I am, sitting at home at 2am, listening to music and relaxing. I pull up my music player (listening to Sigur Ros - Untitled 4, totally irrelevant) and start looking through some albums to see what I feel like playing next. My eyes glance to the "now playing" bar before I decide. I watch the seconds tick off as the song plays, and I suddenly realize that I have never seen seconds move so fast. ever. the song seems the same, but I was literally staring in disbelief at the seconds passing.

Understandably a bit freaked, I decided to pull up a web stopwatch. I click start, and again, the seconds seem to be moving much faster than I feel I am accustomed to. Maybe it has just been a really long time since I have watched the seconds tick off on a stopwatch, but it seems very odd to notice how much my perception of time has changed. I remember "1 mississippi, 2 mississippi" from when I was a kid, and I feel like I have to fly through it just to keep up. I feel like I only get half-way through it if I say it at the pace I remember from my childhood.

Just a bit of reflection on time, perception, and perspective. Any thoughts on the matter?

Time is a joke on us all.

When you're young, you can't wait to turn significant ages, which seems to take forever....

10.. woohoo double digits!
13... teens finally!
16... yay driver's license!
21... let the partying begin!

then time passing begins to suck ...................................

25... oh crap I just turned 21 like yesterday!
30... omg I'm old! This isn't what I expected...
35... Why are these hairs growing in weird spots?
40... Wasn't my 30th birthday not that long ago?
50... I'm ready to collect my social security now thank you, this sucks!

..........................................

age 65.... Great, now I have cancer and have no clue who to blame... where are my kids so I can burden them with my illnesses?

66-70... Chemo...

If you've made it to 71, then all your close friends are probably dead and your accumulated wealth has been drained by the hospital care.

(stats taken from the years 2015 - 2050)
Don't laugh, that's pretty damn accurate.

reply to post by thedeadlyrhythm

The key irony you have noticed is embodied in the title of your thread.

When you watched those clock mechanisms do their thing, you were really just watching something move. And that machine is rigged to move at the "same" rate of speed now as similar mechanisms were rigged to move 10, 20, 50 or 100 years ago.

We can only assume that it is your perception of that motion that has changed.

And there may be mechanisms whereby the time perception of the population of a whole planet could be shifted in unison.

I must say, however, that right now the second hand on my watch is still on "mississippi" time!

reply to post by thedeadlyrhythm


I recently did a thread on this topic as well and even though the explenations given there, as of why time seems to go faster when you are getting older, still it doesn't take away the oddity of experiencing it.

funny you mention the counting seconds. I did the same thing just a few days ago and, like you, I have to rush to speak the entire word before the next second... I remember years ago I had to stretch my speech through the entiiiiiire second, lol.

oh well, must be us 'getting old'

reply to post by JibbyJedi


I just read on our local news that there are now over 50.000 people in Japan alone that reached the age of 100.

if at 50 things really start to suck... imagine what 100 will be like

Originally posted by GypsK
reply to post by thedeadlyrhythm

 

I remember years ago I had to stretch my speech through the entiiiiiire second, lol.

oh well, must be us 'getting old'

hah, exactly! it just was a bit of a shock, i mean how often do you sit there in front of a stopwatch thinking about it? you usually just set it and forget it. perception is a heck of a thing

This reminds me when I was looking at a clock in a pizza place where the seconds didn't tick but it was one continuous sweep of the hand around the clock. It was sooooo bizarre to watch. I felt like the second hand would speed up and slow down. I told this to my friend sitting next to me, and they agreed. It didn't look like the second hand was going at the same speed. I wish I had a video camera to take a video of it and post it online. It was very bizarre!

reply to post by thedeadlyrhythm


Time is an illusion. It is made by the ego. To wake up to no time (or The Now ) we need to transcend the ego. Time as in a human linear perspective is an illusion created by the human ego. The ego is the false self and the part of us that dies, our true Self, our spiritual being does not die. The ego invented linear time so that it could survive within us "in time".

If it were possible to go outside and ask a bird what time it is, it would very naturally say "why its Now of course". It is only our ego (mind) that thinks there is "a time".

Living in The Now is our true natural state to be, its just over thousands of years we have allowed our minds ego to deceive us. It is possible to live without ego time and live within the vibrant natural state of The Now by quieting the mind.

One way of understanding time is to ask yourself when have you ever done anything in the past or future? You haven't, everything you have ever done and are still yet to do was and will be done in The Now. Time passes quicker as you get older because we make it that way. We are always in a hurry to get to the next moment, never living and accepting the now. Watch yourself for a day and you will see this is the case, we are always in a hurry to escape this moment to get to the next. It is no wonder time seems to pass quicker as we age.

I work in the early morning darkness. From about 5:20 am until 7 or so (this time of year) I can watch morning light turn from black to deep blue then light purple and gold and orange to light blue daytime sky.

To me thats the only time of day that it almost seems like the world has no problems.....

Originally posted by GypsK
reply to post by JibbyJedi

 

I just read on our local news that there are now over 50.000 people in Japan alone that reached the age of 100.

They are about to fix that now with Fukushima