Choosing slower motion.

After I told her of three people who have recently, and magically returned to my life- two I have not seen in twenty years and one it’s been thirty, my friend Chisti said in an instant message,

“Amazing isn’t it? Not only can we travel the world in our monitors but we can now time travel as well”

And alas we can!!! We thought back in the day (not twenty years ago) that time travel would occur in some kind of vehicular machine.. the kind you get into and turn a key, but instead it is on our monitors and more better…. our minds.

And of course it has me thinking… About how much we all take for granted, not just time. Most of us ugly Americans have been moving along with the times, barely noticing the changes we experience- and create time.

In the last year, I have had the pleasure of peeking into the lives of others who managed, somehow, by accident, default, or choice, to escape the swift speeding up of time.

Time is so absolutely non linear. At once, it creeps by and speeds around the corner like Mario Andretti was driving. And it is of course (hee hee) ultimately relative.
A choice to relate to time in varying manners allows varying experiences of time.

While driving my son to camp in Pennsylvania, I passed some Amish people, riding bikes, crammed into horse drawn buggies, walking along and I was fascinated. Here I was bringing my son to a crazy extreme sports camp, where he will be skating alongside kids being filmed for MTV reality show, and I am passing horse drawn buggies along the way!
Television?
How does time feel to someone who doesn’t watch tee vee? I can tell you, since I threw out my tee vee, I have lived many more days of creativity.

Here are caravans of Mercedes, BMWs, Range Rovers… parading east and west on the one road into the camp, and they have forgotten how much is being accomplished in those four hours it takes to drive from the city, and the four hours it takes to drive back. An entire crop may be seeded, the first breath of a child, or eighty thousand first breaths… Their child’s first exciting ride to camp, taking what feels like forever to get there…

When I think of my sweetheart, growing up with no tee vee, and not much external stimulation from modern society, it makes sense that he is years my junior and eons my senior. Because he has lived a longer life. He has experienced more moments, drunk in more magic. He has had the great affluence of imagination and wonder. The luxury of innocence far longer than I did. And in turn, I have not been wealthier due to my intake of information and energetic clutter.

I am working on letting go of this need to get through the day faster, or even consciously trying to slow time down when I want more of the juiciness. It take the foresight to notice, and the choice to wonder and ponder on things as they come into experience. The kind of innocence that allows one to ask a question and the patience to wait for more than one answer….

Time doesn’t need to move so fast just because we can now travel backwards and forward and cut through the barriers that once held us in slow motion…
In choosing slower motion, and noticing, one lives longer. And better if we enjoy it.