Time is an illusion. It exists only in the way we let it exists, in the way we experience it. When we’re able to focus our intent enough to choose how to experience/live the moment, we are truly master of Time, of our time.
It’s a matter of perception. A while ago, we had this expression about a friend, we said he has his own time, “Gino’s Time”. I guess now I would say he was wiser than us and lived at its own pace, without chasing other people’s time or clock.
Since I have kids, 12 years now, my perception has been that time has been accelerating every year, month, week. Now a week feels like a day or two. Of course, compared to when I was in high school, days are now filled with more tasks, of various kind. As for many people there are job, school, children, finance, friends, pets, house, vacation, etc. : tons of preoccupations that both fill our days. Nowadays we have all sort of distraction vectors that make things worse by accelerating our perception of time even more: all internet connectivity (emails, social networks, etc), content consumption (movies, articles, books, …)
All that to say that in our time it’s become all the more important to (re)-learn to focus our mind enough to keep control of our perception of time and therefore of time itself.
I can only dream of a time when I would be able to attain such mastery of Time that I could accomplish what I saw a master of Viet Vo Dao (Vietnamese martial art that I used to practice a while ago) do: change its perception of time to the point where he can see the other moves in slow-motion, allowing him to counter their attack easily. While for the rest of us, the action looked pretty fast (and included the use of a saber…)
So let’s breathe, close my eyes, breathe again slowly until I get that glimpse of serenity in the back of my mind and try to make it last.