How time passes

Time’s a funny old thing, isn’t it? I recently posted about the waiting game, and the number of different situations that we can find ourselves just waiting. And there are undoubtedly hundreds more situations where we just have to ‘hang around’ for one reason or another. In these situations, time seems to pass by more slowly than at other times.

For example, trying to get something done by a deadline. It doesn’t matter who has set the deadline… there never seems to be enough time to actually get done what we want to do. We have to rush to finish what we are doing ‘in time’.

Three minutes is an awful long time – if you are waiting for an egg to boil – but no time at all to get an important piece of information clearly across to someone. A year seems to pass at its own pace… but when you think back to previous years, how quick did they go? Remember the millennium… all that hype, the millennium bug, the New Year’s Eve parties… that was over ten years ago! Seems like yesterday, doesn’t it?

Not too long ago, I was a little boy full of excitement and enthusiasm from when I got up in the morning to when I went to bed at night. The days lasted forever, and I can remember the summer holidays in school (they were about six weeks long then) seemed to last for about three months. Sheer bliss!

Nowadays, I’m no sooner getting out of bed in the morning then I’m getting back into it again at night. The days are flying by at an alarming rate. What I do in the day, however, does not seem to fit in with how quickly the days actually pass. I was in work this morning at 8.30. The time was passing so slowly, and I’d completed quite a few tasks that I had to do, and I decided to check the time. I was sure it was 11.30. The clock told me it was 9.30. Only one hour had passed and it felt like three! And I had been busy!!!

I wasn’t the only one to feel this slow passing of time – others commented on it as well.

Now, here’s my thoughts on the matter. Was I noticing how slowly the time was passing because others were commenting on it, or because of what I was doing to pass the time? I was doing boring, run of the mill tasks, so no major thinking needed here, and that could have given me the perception that time was going slowly. The others didn’t mention how slowly they thought the day was going until the afternoon, so the negativity in the comments didn’t reach me until this afternoon, so they couldn’t have affected my perception this morning. Could we all have been passing on our ‘feelings’ that time was going by slowly, so that we were all in the same mindset and experiencing the same thing? A kind of ‘collective awareness’ of how the day was going?

The main point is that the day passed at just about the same rate as it did yesterday, and the same rate that it will tomorrow. I will be doing something I enjoy tomorrow (nothing :)) so the time will probably feel as though it is going a lot faster, compared with what I was doing today – what I don’t really enjoy, work.

If I put my head on correctly, I will be able to utilise all of that spare time in work to enable me to achieve great things. Maybe not so great in the world’s eyes, but great in the way I do my job. Great in the creation of brand new ideas. Great in the way I will be able to improve myself.

I really do enjoy my life, it seems a shame to be complaining about how slowly time is passing when I could be getting to know myself even better.  And, no matter what I am doing, I have all the time in the world to do that!