Einstein once said: “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours. That’s relativity.”
Everyone is moaning that time is speeding up, that we have less time to think, plan, rest, as we scurry every faster like the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass. But if Einstein is right, then time is just another perception. So if the faster you go, the faster time goes, what would be the opposite? Why slowing down of course. Jeremy Rifkin, in his book, Time Wars, suggested that when time seems to be going too quickly, the best thing to do is to just stop and be present. If I am in the present moment, time doesn’t even exist, because every moment is just right now.
The other day, my internet went down as I was reading an article on entropy. Wow, disorder right before my very eyes, I thought. After waiting, and cursing, and wandering about the house like a lost soul, I found myself in my library staring at the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Yup, the real thing, all thirty volumes, staring reproachfully at me, abandoned and forgotten for years. I looked up entropy. I soon had seven volumes spread out on the bed and actually thought, “It’s like 3D Google!” Among all the fascinating things I read was an explanation that entropy proves the irreversibility of time. So, if I stop time, am I reversing entropy?
Every Feldenkrais lesson is an opportunity to reverse entropy. Or at least to stop time for a bit. Moving slowly, pausing and allowing your attention to expand, has been known to reduce stress and anxiety, two products of our hurried lifestyle. Who knows, maybe if everyone lies down at the same time to just listen their breath, we could, well, change the world.
So after reading this, just for a moment, stop. This is your moment.
Interesting little article. I have been thinking about time a lot lately – how we chunk it, how we distort it and ho we experience it.
Chunk size has everything to do with the speed of time. Why did time go so slowly when we were children? Everything was new, every little detail could capture our imagination. Going into a restaurant was an adventure – the spoon alone was fascinating – it was shiny and you could see you reflection upside down and it was all uncategorized. Now, as an adult it all goes into one category – one big chunk – like restaurant or eating out.
When you wait in line time usually slows down (even if we are in a hurry). We start noticing smaller details – maybe we look at our shoes, or the shoes of the person next to us, or the other people in line, or what other people have in their baskets, and what are all those “small things” before the checkout counter.
It is inherent in slowing down that we automatically chunk in smaller portions. Or that when we chunk in smaller portions we naturally slow down.
Supermarkets know this – that’s why they have all those small chunk items to attract your attention at the checkout counter. As skilled teachers we guide our students attention to smaller chunks of their experience – helping the slowness to develop into a rich sensory experience. Slow movements can also be created by directing attention to smaller details – but I don’t think this comes as easily to some people.
Interestingly, people can get to the end of an Awareness Through Movement lesson and go, “wow, an hour passed already?”
My perception is that we can slow down entropy…. not so much reverse it. It appears to me that we can always start new paths that can lead to expansion and/or contraction, but time moves on…… as my icon Buzz says “to Infinity and beyond!”