Slaves of Time, August 15 '08

I've been thinking lately of the concept of time and its importance in our lives and the way it affects us as we go about our daily business. Watching people move through the city, watching the changes as they happen, people getting older, events taking shape, the rise and fall of movements and other developments as human progress. Can we consider all this as a product of time?

What if we were to consider time as a concept created by our mind to maintain order? What on earth did we do before there were any clocks, calendars and ways to count the passing days. Why has time become such a pivotal aspect of our lives, in such a way that we have become slaves in this illusionary cobweb? We're always looking at the clock, racing against time to get things done, constantly worrying about the schedule and how we're going to find the time to do so and so, and whether there is enough time for such and such.

Time is a dimension that exists independent of space; therefore it is quite malleable and flexible. What if there was a way to slow it down?

It's all a matter of how we think of it. If we define the passing of time with the changing of seasons, and the alternation of day and night, we can come to an interesting conclusion. Nature is moving in a constant speed. But why is it that time always flies when you're having fun, and sometimes the minutes seem like hours when you're not having fun?

The time you spend with a favorite buddy or something you enjoy doing seems to fly by as if you just met, but on the contrary, you're sitting in class, in the last hour of a long day at school in an extremely boring subject and that minute hand seems as if it's dying from a stroke.

If time can be so malleable, then we can conclude our concept of time is a product of our mental perception. Therefore, we can actually change our perceptions to get time to work in our favor.

If we define progress as the amount of work done in a certain framework of time, and if we mentally define "time well spent" as good progress towards a certain goal, then that would mean we were working at peak efficiency in that time frame.

Our brains spend a ton of energy processing redundant information that fills up most of our day. If I were to give myself a score out of 10 for "progress" at the end of the day, it would probably be around 1 or lower. That day, like any other day, would have passed so quickly that I wouldn't even notice the weeks and months that have passed by in this fashion; until one day I look back, amazed at the little progress and the amount of time that has passed. That is scary, and that is a bitter reality for many of us.

So how do you regain control of this seemingly uncontrollable monster? One way is to get rid of all the clocks in your house and move to the Canary Islands, but that is not economically feasible for many. A more simple method is to change our perception and the way we think about time, by finding the most efficient way possible of doing work.

The most efficient way of doing work is to organize your mind and get rid of the clutter that fills up most of the day with useless information about the past, future, what should be, what could be and etc. This is easier said than done of course, but if the day would come when we would be strong enough to control our thoughts and channel our brain power into things that matter IN THE PRESENT, we would become the master of time. This by itself is the single most important tool of mankind in this day and age. It would free us of a lot shackles and chains we have inflicted on ourselves through erroneous mental software imposed on us from childhood.