Can We Slow Down Time?
For most people, it turns out, there are basically two times: “Now” and “Some other time.” And the “other time” is typically divided into past and future.
Have you ever noticed, when you think back over the previous weeks, months, or even years, that there are bright, glittering islands of crystal-clear memory that pop out of the fog of time?
What’s with that?
Why do I remember clearly crossing a street on a rainy day in Portland five years ago when I couldn’t tell you what else happened that day, that week, or even that month if my life depended on it?
Or that time Louise and I were out walking on the 400 acres we once owned in Vermont on a gray, wintry day twenty years ago when we heard a cat howl, the sound seemingly coming from the sky?
Or just two weeks ago standing in the pharmacy line at the local Target store?
Why is it that when I remember the trip we took to Antarctica last November it seems like it lasted months instead of just a week? But all of last month seems to have flown by with a smearing of time?
What determines what we remember and what blurs into a long, gray, indistinct “past”? Why does time seem to go faster sometimes and at other times slows to a crawl? And how can we get control of it all, so we can remember more things more clearly and even slow down time in our lives?
It turns out I’m not the first to have asked these questions, and multiple philosophers and scientists over the centuries have examined these issues. What they’ve found, if internalized, can be life changing.
For most people, it turns out, there are basically two times: “Now” and “Some other time.” And the “other time” is typically divided into past and future.
Here’s the key: most of us spend most of our time, when not occupied by a task (driving, working, shopping) or entertainment (watching TV, screen surfing, reading), are thinking about the past or the future. We actually spend very, very little time in “now.”
Typically, what jolts us into “now” is some sort of a shock or surprise. I’ll never forget, for example, tumbling through the air inside a van I was driving back in the 1960s when it lost control on an icy street and hit another car head-on; I still remember every moment in slow-motion. The same is true of the time I broke my back skydiving when I was 19.
But it doesn’t need to be anything that radical or intense. Sometimes we’re not even sure what it was that suddenly brought us out of our perpetual reverie and into “now”; I can’t remember what it was that caused me to “wake up” standing in line at the CVS, but something did as I still have that memory.
Those little crystals of clear memory we discover when we review our past, then, are the moments when we were actually and fully present in “now” at that time. The gray sea that surrounds them is the majority of the time when we’re running on autopilot or ruminating about the past or the future.
I was first introduced to this concept in my teenage years by reading PD Ouspensky, although two different teachers shared similar insights later in my life. It turns out that it is possible to slow down time, to savor life more completely, and to build meaningful isles of memory.
The key is to become present. To bring your attention to this very moment.
For example, in a moment pause in your reading this article, look up, and notice the space around you. See what you’re seeing, hear what you’re hearing, and notice the feelings in your body and on your skin. Spend a moment with each sense, including any smells in the room or tastes in your mouth.
Then come back to this page.
If you did that well, odds are you just created a memory that will stay with you for quite a while. It’ll become one of those sparkling jewels of memory, because you were fully present for it.
Most of us, without practice, can’t sustain this for more than a few moments. Inevitably some thought will pop up as we’re noticing and being present with the world around us and drag us back into past or future; that chair reminds me of the time years ago when my son spilled paint all over it, the smell of freshly cut grass reminds me of when my dad used to mow the lawn; I wonder what Louise is making for dinner as it smells sort of like a curry...
Novelty, scientists tell us, is the number one thing that causes us to stop thinking and start being, bringing us out of rumination and into the present. Its why vacations seem so long in our memories; they’re a continuous stream of new and novel experience. British writer Tom Watson, for example, writes that he’s going to take more vacations in order to “slow down time” and thus experience more of his limited allotment here on planet Earth.
But because we’re so used to not being present (mostly by focusing on external sources of entertainment) simply intentionally bringing our attention to now is, in and of itself, also a source of novelty.
Again, this is nothing new. Millennia ago Vipassana, also known as mindfulness meditation, was taught and practiced widely in India; it still has a wide following and recent research proves its ability to train people to be present in ways that produce both mental and physical health benefits.
I spent a week with His Holiness The Dalai Lama at his home in India a quarter-century ago; I was part of a group that he’d called together to discuss how to advance world peace (Harrison Ford narrated a movie about our visit). One of the techniques I practiced for hours in his large meditation room in Dharamsala — suggested to me by one of his monks — was, every time my mind would wander off, to simply imagine the thought as a bubble and to mentally reach out with a finger to touch and burst it while saying to myself the word “thinking.”
Pause your reading now and try that for a minute or two.
Once you get the hang of it, you don’t need to be sitting and meditating to come to the present moment. You can do it driving, working, even when in conversation with others. Just pay attention to your senses and catch yourself when your mind wanders.
The amazing reality is that while we’re given a limited amount of time on this planet, we spend most of it somewhere other than “now”; typically in the remembered (and often regretted) past or the imagined (and often feared) future.
By letting go of these preoccupations and bringing your attention to this moment, you’re literally increasing the experienced time you’ll have in this life.
It is possible to slow down time, enrich your experience of life, and let go of the plagues of obsessing on the past and future.
Mr. Hartmann, I think I know what you are talking about here. When I was in grad school at ISU in Ames, Iowa 53 years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in sessions wherein I was required to empty my mind of any thought or sensation. To exist like an animal, alive, awake, breathing, seeing, hearing, but no thoughts in my head. It was extremely difficult to do this. As time went by and I repeated the attempt to empty my mind, I found that I could do it for longer and longer periods. But it always remained extremely difficult. I was never able to do this for more than minutes at a time. Yet I had a friend who could slide into this state almost any time he wished and stay there for hours without falling asleep. Needless to say, he was an Indian, a Hindu. He told me to not feel disappointed about my inability to do this emptying with ease. He said he could do it easily because it was an integral part of his Indian culture and he had begun doing it at an early age. It seems this emptying is like learning language. It is done without much effort and with only very little encouragement; if it is done very early in life. For an adult to learn to do it for the first time is like an adult trying to learn a foreign language in a classroom setting, without actually living physically in the place and culture where the language is natively spoken.
I much more easily remember and use the Low German slang I learned incidentally, not formally from hearing the speech of my grandparents as a child; than I can remember or use the German I learned
formally in school. All that stuff about the structure of the German grammar, the subjunctive case and word order, and so on I have long since forgotten. But the phrases my grandparents used are still with me. I think acquiring the ability to empty the mind or stop time is similar.
As for the notions about past, present and future, as we English speakers understand them; my Anthropologist colleagues made it clear to me that this was determined by the culture in which one lives and grows up in. Apparently there are languages which do not ordinarily think of a future. For them there is normally only the present and the amorphous past. Anything else is absurd to people who speak such languages. Yet these same anthropological colleagues assured me that anything which can be said in any particular language; can be said and understood in all other languages. No exceptions. Some languages are better at articulating certain concepts than are other languages. But all languages can articulate all human knowledge regardless of its source. This is one of the reasons Chomsky claimed there is a universal human language. He gave one other reason also for his belief in a universal language. I still remember the gist of his argument, but I cannot do it justice, so I will skip it. Furthermore, I was never sure that I agreed with Chomsky.
As a post script, it is fun to think of mathematics as an unspoken language. A language we can think only think in. Never can we speak to another in the language of mathematics . What we do is translate math into a spoken human language and that is what we actually speak when communicating mathematical relationships and concepts to other people. Strangely enough, there is a written mathematical language. And ironically, it is hard to imagine mathematics in any form but the written.
Only twice in my life have I had an epiphany. The second time was when I sat up all night trying to solve a calculus problem which required knowledge of the integral. But I had at that point studied only differential calculus. The epiphany came when the concept of the integral popped into my mind at three am aided by several cups of coffee. I wonder how many others have had that same epiphany, besides, of course Newton and Leibniz. I am certainly not unique. No human being is. We are all truly made of the same celestial clay.
When a car hit the side of my car as I watched it happen and my car started to roll upside down, I heard my blood 🩸 moving near my ears 👂 like time ticking in S L O W motion. My attention was fully present and it seemed like each moment was a minute long.
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A woman cured herself from cancer by staying alone at a friend’s house on the beach. She was very weak. And had suffered from a hurtful relationship and she had anger and resentment. She put aside all thoughts of the past to focus on the sound of the birds and waves 🌊. The feeling of the warm sand beneath her feet. She did that every day as she walked by the sea, going longer and longer each day as she gained strength. She stayed present all day, while baking bread 🍞 feeling the silky ness of the flour. About a month later she was cured.