On Relativity

[sdi]

A long time ago—one of the first things I ever posted to this blog—I opined how long life was and wondered why people always say otherwise. These days, time seems to crawl at around a third of the speed I remember as "normal"—that is, a day feels like three, a week feels nearly like a month, etc. The topic came up on this month's Open Post over at Ecosophia (prompted by Cointoss #23), where most responses have simply parroted the conventional wisdom which I disagree with. So the nature of time and why it seems so slow to me but not others has been on my mind today, but I couldn't come up with a solid answer.

Now, I read many fairy tales to my daughter, and ones with riddles are her favorites. Tonight, out of nowhere, she felt like quizzing me before we dug into our bedtime story. "What is the fastest thing in the world?"

"Oh, I know! I've heard this one told a few ways. Is it 'thought?' Or perhaps, 'the wind that travels over the steppes?'"

"Wrong! It's 'time,' daddy."

"Are you sure about that? I think time is pretty slow."

"It's fast for me," she said, and in a sing-song voice she added, "time flies when you're having fun." Then, suddenly serious, "Next riddle! What is the slowest thing in the world?"

Now I was curious what she'd say, so rather than answer her, I waited an appropriate interval and said, "I'm stumped. What's the slowest thing in the world?"

"It's 'time' again, but when you're bored."

Now, this struck me as a very astute observation—indeed, an obvious one, but one I'd totally missed. And, of course, my daughter knew nothing about the thoughts that were on my mind. So the synchronicity left me thoughtful. On reflection, I think she's right: human life, and indeed the material world as a whole, is very boring—perhaps this is because I've been at it too long, and perhaps this is why I am so fixedly determined to move beyond it, and why there is little save metaphysics and math that continues to hold much interest for me.

There's a silver lining, though: it seems most people have a very difficult time meditating, like sitting still for a few minutes will kill them or something. I've never had that problem: meditation is no more boring than anything else, and after a few years of practice it gets to be a lot less boring than most other things. Maybe that's another reason I keep at it so.

In any case, it's nice to have a solid answer that "feels right" to a question that's been plaguing me for years.

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

That thought and light are analogous and the possible implications of that are really tantalizing; if we extend that to thoughts contemplating material objects (or even "images," that is, the language of the astral) I think we arrive at...well, magic. Have to meditate a lot on this before I can even venture a coherent thought, but very, very interesting...

Sychronstically, ran across a related quote from this blog post...

This foundational practice of seeing everything as light is applied to the world around us, because that formulates our foundation, or sense of stability, to this world we live in as well as when it is applied to the imaginal realms of the mind that connect us to the astral dimensions of the psychic. It is this very real application of light, and with it heat, that allows us to transform or transmute both ourselves and the world around us: the creation of miracles one might say.