How many moments are there in a minute? The question may sound funny but it cuts to the heart of a bigger question: What is the nature of time?
I can’t provide a definitive answer on the nature of time, but I can say that my concept of it has shifted appreciably in the last few days.
For years my perception of time has been one of going faster and faster and somehow getting less and less done. Does that sound familiar?
If your life is anything like mine, the pace seems to grow faster every year. We try to cram more activities into a day than ever before. And we compensate for our pell-mell willy-nilly rush with cell phones and PDA’s, fast food and microwave ovens, TIVO and voice mail. We also do more than one thing at a time, like talking on the phone while driving, or eating in front of the TV. We’re overscheduled and starved for time.
Changing Perceptions of Time
What a far cry this is from our ancestors. Twenty thousand years ago we measured time by the phases of the moon, the seasons, and the solstices. For people in that era time was a cyclical experience and presumably it wasn’t considered a scarcity.
Three thousand years ago the Mayans of Central America created the first 365 day calendar. The ancient Egyptians invented the sun dial at about the same time. Mechanical clocks first appeared in the 1300’s, but minute hands didn’t show up until 1676. Second hands followed four years later. But somehow those inventions weren’t enough.
Our society has become so obsessed with time that we’ve invented ever smaller and smaller units of measurement for it. Do you know how long a nanosecond is? Does it matter? To some people it actually does. Olympic athletes can become highly paid celebrities or has-beens based on race results differing by only a few hundredths of a second.
Fortunately I don’t measure my life in nanoseconds, but I’m as culpable as my friends and neighbors for the craziness of my life schedule.
Types of Time
In his book Jewish with Feeling, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi calls this parsing of moments “commodity time.” Rather than eating when we are hungry, we eat at noon because that is the time of our lunch break. Rather than going to the bathroom when we need to, we go when it is convenient. In other words, rather than living our lives as a series of meaningful experiences we segment it into units that are most convenient and most saleable in the marketplace.
Zalman contrasts commodity time with what he calls “organic time.” Commodity time says that the day starts at midnight. Organic time says the day starts at sunrise. Commodity time says you need to drive to work even if it’s snowing. Organic time says take a snow day. Commodity time means looking at your watch and your calendar. Organic time means listening to your heart and paying attention to your surroundings.
Since reading Zalman’s book several months ago I’ve begun to reassess my views of time both in physical reality and nonphysical reality. For several years now I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to contrast my experiences in physical space-time with those in alternate realities where time as we know it doesn’t exist. Yet it was only a few days ago that I successfully translated my experiences of no-time into physical reality.
Since January 5, 2006 my perception of time has literally been altered. To use Zalman’s words, I’ve been experiencing life in organic time 24 hours per day. Since making that shift I feel I’ve got all the time I need. From this perspective, minutes seem to be twice as long as they were before. I now have more time to think, more time to notice things, more time to get things done. And all without rushing.
Somehow I’ve managed to recognize the subjective or illusory nature of time, much like you might notice a stage magician palming a card or hiding something up his sleeve.
You probably know what I’m talking about, although you might not have considered in this way before.
Time Is Subjective
We all know that a minute is 60 seconds. And we all know more or less how long a minute is. Test yourself. Check your watch and without counting guess when a minute is up. Chances are you are going to be pretty close. You might come in at 50 seconds or 70 seconds, but you’re not likely to be off too significantly. Yet your perception of the passage of time can be altered by what you’re doing during those 60 seconds.
Take the phrase “time flies when you’re having fun.” By this we mean that when we’re having fun time seems to pass more quickly. The same might be said for when we’re overscheduled and have too much to do.
The inverse is also true. When you’re in a hurry and you get stuck at a red light, the wait seems interminable. That same feeling applies when you’re stuck in a meeting you don’t care about. Time drags on and on. Too fast or too slow, your experience of time is subjective.
What I’ve come to realize is that since time is subjective, I can use it as a tool for experiencing my life in physical reality. I’m now in the process of becoming more discriminating in how I choose to use it. No longer do I view time as a single one-size-fits-all experience. Instead, I’ve begun to explore different ways of perceiving the moment we call now.
The Moment Is Now
Most of us spend very little of our time actually experiencing the moment we’re in. Sometimes we’re thinking about the future—when I get to work I need to finish that paperwork; when I win the lottery I’m going to buy a new boat. Sometimes we’re thinking about the past—I wish I’d spent more time with Aunt Jody last weekend; next time Uncle Bill insults me I’m going to stand up for myself. Rarely do we devote our full and complete attention to the present moment, the now.
By shifting a greater percentage of my awareness into the now, my concept of how long a minute is has literally changed. Lately I experience far more in the span of a minute than I ever used to.
For instance, it was a beautiful 70 degrees in Boulder, Colorado today. So my wife Janet and I took a walk along a creekside path near our home. On the way we talked as we normally do. But rather than paying attention to her words and thinking of what I wanted to say next, I simply paid attention. I concentrated on her words enough to follow them, but I used a soft focus that also encompassed everything else around me.
And from that perspective I noticed far more detail than I normally do. I noticed the sound of the gravel crunching under my feet. I noticed the trickling of the creek as it slipped past ice dams lingering in the shadowed sections of the stream bed. I noticed buds forming on the tree limbs. I noticed the late afternoon sunlight on the wingtips of a flock of geese. I noticed the variegated pattern in the rocks along the edge of the reservoir. I noticed these details and countless more. But I didn’t deliberately look for them at all. I merely became aware of them in a way I rarely am.
Yet attention to detail is only the tip of the iceberg. In my expanded sense of now I also literally have time for more thoughts than I used to during the same 60 seconds. My brain feels like its working nearly twice as fast, yet I feel I am using half the effort. I noticed this at the office while I was writing a major report. My concentration was better. My thoughts came quicker, and my fingers seemed to fly across the keyboard. I accomplished almost twice as much as I normally do in the same amount of time.
But this expanded sense of time doesn’t just apply to my mental activities. It seems to apply to physical activities as well. On Thursday I went to the gym to lift weights. Normally my workout routine takes an hour and 15 minutes to complete. This time it took only 55 minutes. The gym was no more or less crowded than usual. I didn’t skip repetitions or sets, and I never rushed. Nor did I feel that I waited a shorter period of time between sets or between exercises. Yet somehow I finished 20 minutes earlier than usual. A fluke? Perhaps.
Plenty of Time
But my new expanded sense of time has continued non-stop for three days now. Watching a movie obviously takes a fixed amount of time, yet I notice I have more time to observe the details on the screen and think as each scene unfolds. I appreciate the flavor in each bite of food in a way I rarely have. When I listen to music I clearly hear the notes, but I also enjoy the pauses between them.
In other words, my experience of time is shifting from one of scarcity to one of plenty. In letting go of my sense of commodity time, I’m finding that I actually have more time for everything in my life. While I have not forgotten my meetings and deadlines, my sense of time is becoming cyclical or organic. It’s now about the moment. It’s as much about the beat of my heart and the rhythm of my breathing as it is about hours and minutes and seconds.
How long will this experience last? It’s too soon to say. But I can tell you that my concept of how many moments there are in a minute has been forever altered.
