When you're six years old the summer holidays stretch
forever. By the time you reach thirty they seem to be over before you've even
had time to change out of your work clothes. It's one of the rules of time that
you have more of it when you're young. It also changes speed depending on how
much time you need.
The ancient Roman poet Virgil described this phenomenon
first when he said, "All our sweetest hours fly fastest." J. K.
Rowling, in one of the 'Harry Potter' books, wrote, "When you are dreading
something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging
habit of speeding up." And David Bowie said that it was flexible in much
more basic terms in his song, 'Time'.
I recently went boating and among the crew was a young boy,
aged ten. He asked me what the time was and then, about fifteen minutes later,
asked again. And again, after about thirty minutes more had passed. This went
on for a few hours until curiosity (and a bit of annoyance) got the better of
me.
'Why do you keep checking the time so frequently?' I asked
him.
He looked at me, all innocence, and answered, ' Because I
can't believe how slowly time goes on a boat.'
He's right, of course. When you're on the water without the
hustle and bustle of 'normal' life to distract you then you take the chance to
wind down, to breathe more deeply and appreciate the world around you. It's the
same if you take a walk through a forest or any other natural place. The earth;
the sky; the sea: getting closer to any of these elemental forces makes time
slow down, or at least it appears to. But not that fourth natural element,
fire. Getting close to that makes things happen very quickly indeed.
I've found that the so-called-constant time varies in my
working life too. If, for instance, I'm just working on something that I plan
to send off on spec somewhere, with no firm offer of payment and no deadline,
then I can rattle it off in what seems like no time at all. The work is easy
and I end up having plenty of time to check Facebook and play Candy Crush at
the same time.
If, however, I'm up against a deadline and have, say, two
hours left to produce an article then I'm always astounded at how short that
time becomes. By the time I've booted the machine, had a coffee or two, checked
my emails, had a game of Candy Crush, adjusted my chair for the third time of
the day and been to the toilet for some much-needed ponderence time those two
hours have been whittled down to about twenty minutes.
I think Zall's Second Law probably sums it up the best.
"How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
on."
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