Time slows down when you’re moving really fast.
-Author Walter Isaacson discussing Einstein’s theory of relativity.

   From the moment we learn to tell time, we may form a false notion: That time moves at a fixed pace measured by clocks. An hour takes exactly sixty minutes. A minute lasts exactly sixty seconds.
   As we learned to tell time in our childhood, we may have lost our understanding of its relativity. For example, we encounter the confusion of wondering why the minute hand toward the end of the school day seems to take so long to reach the "12" while that same minute hand becomes like a second hand when we are enjoying ourselves…   

   For millions who dislike their work, the weekday clock is a glacier. The weekend clock is a rabbit.
   The truth of Einstein’s theory has always been challenging to comprehend as a notion of physics.  When the great genius first published his theory in 1905, his work was largely ignored. In that very same year, Einstein also announced that light was made of particles as well as waves and that gravity bends light. Again, each of his papers was initially ignored (except by the great scientist, Max Planck) because they seemed so preposterous to other scientists of the time.

   We go about our daily lives paying very little attention to Einstein’s physics. We are more likely to pay attention to anti-aging cremes than we are to the fact that if we were traveling at 90 per cent of the speed of light we would age at about half our present speed because time would literally slow down that much. If you’re wondering about the truth of this, note that a conclusive test of this theory was done in 1972, as reported at http://www.geocities.com:

    Sensitive atomic clocks carried on spacecraft and then compared with
identical clocks on the ground after the flight were found to have
slowed down – meaning that time itself had passed more slowly aboard
the spacecraft.

   The idea that we would disappear if we traveled even with the speed of light is just too far-fetched for most of us to be worth more than a passing thought. But what if we forget physics and think, instead, about our personal concepts of the passage of time?
   I could cry (although it would be a waste of time) at the unnumbered moments I have squandered trying to command the pace of the clock. How much of my life have I wasted wishing the present would get out of the way so I could enter a desired future? How many times have I destroyed the joy of the moment by wringing my hands over how it’s all going to be over too soon?
   These mistakes are natural enough but far to common. There is a solution. Living in the now, a subject that seems to rise in popularity as our lives increase in complexity, requires rethinking life long patterns. The idea is as simple, and as difficult, as living the moment we are in whether it’s pleasant or not.
   This doesn’t mean we become masochists about pain. It means we accept the situation we are in if it’s something we can’t change. It means that at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, we don’t waste a moment wanting it to be Friday at 5:00 p.m. When Friday comes, will we ruin it worrying about Monday?
   Every caregiver that has worked a night shift knows how slow some of the hours seem to be. But I have known far too many caregivers who spent significant parts of their lives counting the days to retirement. And some of them start counting many years before the date arrives.
   Before we discard any of this thinking as obvious, perhaps a helpful spiritual practice is to honestly consider 1) how much of our lives we are spending wishing a given moment was over? 2) How does this thought process rob time from our lives?
   The most powerful theory may not, for us, be Einstein’s. Instead, it may be the time theory by which we live our lives.
   Life is not, contrary to what our daily planner may suggest, about packing as many activities into each half hour as possible. Living fully in the present may well be a high-level spiritual practice. And it is one that our patients may well wish we would live while they are in our care.

-Erie Chapman

Today’s Quote:

To love at all is to be
vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and
possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you
must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it
carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all
entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your
selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it
will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable,
impenetrable, irredeemable. – C.S. Lewis