I’m assuming we’ve all had that experience of realizing time is both fact and fiction. There is the measurable increments of seconds and minutes and then there is that fascinating and bizarre phenomena of timing passing too fast or too slow.
Like people who say their adult children were babies “just yesterday”. I have not personally experienced this. It took 100 years to raise Gorgeous Gal. And how can Little Sir only be turning 5 this year when I can’t remember life without him?
My two foster children that I thought we would adopt and therefore got my heartbroken extra hard when they moved have been gone since 2008 and I can still tell you about their favorite foods and outfits and places we went.
Or how the drive to somewhere new can seem so long and then the trip home seems so fast.
I read this article. I hope you do. You can kind of skim it because the author belabors the topic a bit.
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-different-cultures-understand-time-2014-5
But I found it fascinating. I have lived in Latin America and have friends and relatives from Mexico. And I have other relatives and friends of Asian descent (and with their time interpretation). We even joke. “Oh, they’re on Tico Time.” Or “Filipino Time…”
When I lived in Costa Rica those months, I got used to this idea of it all kind of unfolding. As it was want to do. My English class started at 4, but if it was raining, then come later. We had an outline that we followed. Unless we didn’t.
The very first day I was there absolutely nothing that had been planned to happen happened. I was so un-nerved, I thought of leaving.
And then new plans were made and didn’t work out and some did and some of the old ones turned themselves around and I got over it. But that first day, I don’t think my anxiety was over unrealized plans, but the ease with which everyone saw things falling apart and would just say “Pura Vida” or “Tranquila”.
Or we talk about the steps for grief or getting fit or what-have-you and then we’re told, but it’s not linear. My head wants to explode. HOW can they be steps in they aren’t linear?
So the article says, it’s not all linear. Not just that time isn’t linear, but that’s certain peoples’ perception of time is non linear. For example, the Japanese that can be both rigid and exceedingly patient.
And somehow they are still alive.
Something resonated (my friend Jef calls it the inner DING!) about how I am judging my life and its forward progression.
Because what if it’s not all forward? And it certainly isn’t.
And what if that is okay? Because it is.
And since it’s okay for me, I think it’s okay for you too.