Time – The Ultimate Trickster
On this April Fool’s Day, it is genuinely appropriate to discuss the ultimate trickster of them all — Time. Just what the heck is this earthly construct called “time”. Time – measured by today’s atomic clocks at over nine billion cesium energy jumps per second. There is more to this “tick-tock, tick-tock” trickster however than meets the senses. Have you felt that experience of time “flying by” when you involved in an activity that you enjoy doing and are good at. The greater the enjoyment, the faster time speeds up. Conversely, when you are doing something that you have zero interest in or find distasteful or boring, time then slows down to a snail’s pace. You look at the clock and it seems like invisible gremlins are holding back the hands of the clock. Yes, time is indeed the ultimate trickster.
The Eternal Now
According to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, time slows down or speeds up depending how fast something is moving. The ultimate conclusion of this is that time itself would stop if you could hypothetically move at the speed of light. On earth, time remains a constant, neither speeding up nor slowing down but our perception of it varies widely. It has been postulated that when your spirit or soul leaves your body and proceeds to wherever it belongs, time, as such, ceases to exist. Everything happens in the “now moment.” Time does not travel forward from a point in the past to a point in the future. The present merely changes. Everything happens in the now. In the 1300’s, the theologian, philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart wrote, ” There exists only the present instant…a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.”
Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock
When your soul moves on from earth, there will be no calendars, no clocks, no time. No placing an X over a day on the calendar or tearing off a page from a calendar for a month that is over. Here on earth however that would not work. There must be the “tick-tock, tick-tock” of time in order to allow you to measure your movements, your actions, your life. You can do your very best to live fully in the current moment but you are always aware of time past and time ahead. Even while writing this post, time was playing games with me. I found myself looking down at my watch and thinking to myself “What – 7:30 already! That’s ridiculous. It was 6:00 just a few minutes ago!” Another thing about time that I have discovered is that the older you get, the faster time zips by. The years crawl by when you are young, but then, each successive decade of life, time goes by faster and faster. When you hit your sixties, time appears to perversely speed up exponentially, seemingly to get you to your ultimate demise all that much quicker. So what are you to do with this thing called “time”.
Improve Your Relationship With Time
One of the wisest men in the history of the world, King Solomon, may hint at the answer. From the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verses 12 and 13 (ESV): “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in his toil.” The philosopher and a-theist Albert Camus ironically comes to somewhat the same conclusion in “The Myth of Sisyphus” when he states that Sisyphus can only be free when he comes into harmony with his circumstances. Whether you are involved in a major life undertaking or cleaning your ceramic toilet with a scrub brush, focus on what you are doing in the “right now”. Do it the very best you know how to do it. It doesn’t totally take away the mischievous trickery of time, but it does help to “take the edge off”. Plus, in the world of manifesting, learning how to focus on feeling as if your desire is real, right now, is definitely “where it’s at”.