I just started the ever popular book Educated by Tara Westover. She talks a lot about her father and his dependency on, or rather, subjection to, time and the speed at which he desired his own life and the lives of his family members to move at, no matter the difficulties created from such.
Reading the memoir has caused me to spend some time thinking about the speed of my own life and my ability and inability to control such speed.
Time is such a weird concept if you think about it. Some people even write it as “time” because they think it’s a construct, a figment of our own human creation. Some people don’t even think time exists. I don’t have anything decisive to say about this, but I do have a few thoughts.
1. Time can simultaneously feel like the only thing I can control – how fast or slow I do something, how I choose to spend my time, etc – and also the hardest thing to control – how it often escapes me, scares me, and more.
2. One minute doing X can feel a whole lot different than one minute doing Y (choose your X and Y).
3. Time, the speed of doing something, and the speed at which I think often feel subjected to my surroundings; my pace of life feels different in downtown New York City than in the woods in Colorado.
4. Sometimes I want things to move really fast. Other times I want things to move really slow. I have no clue why this is.
5. Sometimes one small segment of time (perhaps an afternoon, a week, or even a month) can feel like it determines the rest of my life.
6. From above – how is it that one small unit of time can impact my perception of “all time”?
There are plenty more, but I’ll leave it there.
To be continued…
My Thoughts 