How to speed up and slow down TIME…

29 April 2020

How to speed up and slow down TIME…

For the last three days, I have been driving with a dear friend over 2,000 miles across the country. We have taken turns at the helm of our four-wheeled world, and run the atmospheric gamut from blaring music, thought-provoking audio books, stimulating conversation, inane delirium to utter silence. For miles and miles, hours and hours. Over the course of this pilgrimage, the passage of time inside our vehicle has felt as radically varied as the landscape and topography outside of it. It has given me a particularly poignant reminder of the arbitrary nature of our human relationship with time. 

Through the desolate farmlands of Missouri, my mind wandered smoothly, happily, along the contours of the road like my pen had done with each contoured-line drawing I had designed for my post-collegiate graphic art business. Hours passed in the blink of an eye; in the rolling hills of a memory. 

Through the heavily populated, construction-laden, density of Chicago, my mind, conversely, shot to attention—acutely calculating, calibrating, compensating within the amoebic organism of chaotic cars around us. Time slowed to a crawl with the traffic—cramming a myriad of life into the lethargy of each creeping moment.

Whenever I started to quantify distance, estimate arrival times, or worry about deadlines, the viscosity of time became thicker, feeling almost punitive as I tried to push through my resistance onto the next temporary destination point. It felt awful. Whenever I tapped into the beautiful flow of the present moment—no matter where I was along the path—time seemingly dilated, allowing for energy to flow with exponential ease and velocity. It felt amazing. 

Just as my route of navigation followed its ever-changing serpentine path across the land, so, too, did my ever-changing feeling of time ebb and flow. The moment that my body—my emotional instrument—started to yell with discomfort, frustration, road rage, I realized that my brain was in the rear view mirror, or too far ahead on the GPS map. Once I acknowledged how I felt, I was able to sync up with the most efficient-feeling navigation—the worry, thought, entire concept of time...evaporated.

The past does not technically exist anymore. The future hasn’t happened yet. 

ALL WE TRULY HAVE IS THIS PRESENT MOMENT.

And if we do our best to BE, NOW, as often as we can, then the construct of time—its vice grip, endless trip or emotional trigger—will evanesce, allowing us the ability to really experience the most brilliant flow and beautiful topography along life’s journey.

Happy trails...