"Is it future or is it past?" I walk to my house down the long dark, cool street in Roebling. I am in this moment. The chill of the air, the darkness itself, the slight chirp of my car security system as i double check that it is locked, it is all present. I think back on where i came from. I think back to the journey from Spellbound Brewery in Mount Holly and the taste of a Major Nelson IPA, blue eyes staring back at me and good company, and i realize in stark relief the explosion of time. By explosion i mean taking something to its essence and expanding that out to such a degree that you cannot even begin to see the edges. That is my experience of time.
We hear it all the time.... time is moving so much faster all the time. It is this idea that as we grow "older" the giant boulder of time picks up speed as it races down the hill to our inevitable end. "Where did the time go?" "You young people never heard of the band Nirvana? Oh i feel so old!" It seems to be the accepted agreement of our shared society's worldview that as we grow older the time seems to pick up speed and fly by. We get closer to our end and the end gets closer to us at an ever racing speed. I don't have that. If anything, to me, the time has been contracting, slowing down and i have theories on why that it. But, as i said, even this journey of less than an hour, from Spellbound Brewery to my home in Roebling, seemed to be unfathomably long. I can't comprehend that the beginning of that ride was merely a half hour ago.
When you truly live in and embrace the moment this tends to happen. Each day has so many powerful instances of the Now, and if you try to get into each one, each day feels like a very long period of time. I try to live in the moment, and thus, those moments explode for me. This makes things like red lights and the common cold very unbearable. Red lights seem to trail on and on forever for me and there are times i have to focus and think about my breathing or i would get out of my car and run away. When i feel sick i feel like i will never be well again because the days are so infinite and filled with moments that are filled with sickness. I feel when i get sick, which really does not happen often, that sick is where i am and will always be. I would not trade these things because i love this abundance of life i am blessed with based on the embrace of the eternal moment, the now, the present...
So why does the time seem to rush by at break neck speed for most of us? I think a lot of it is because we wish it on ourselves. We do not tend to live in the moments, but long for the weekend and for things to be over. We wish our lives away. We also tend to look at the whole time line. We have access to all of our memories in this present moment. When you think back to your childhood that is present in this now, and when you put it in the context of years, that 20, 30 or 40 years is an instant as it is recollected. You were right there as that child, and now here you are with decades that have past and in the world of memory it is an instant. These thoughts can overwhelm. When you are five and staring at 80 years ahead of you, the well seems infinitely full, but when you are 60 and feel that immediacy of the memory of 5, then realize there is less time on the back side, you feel that the time has flown by and there is little left.
It does not have to be this way. If you live in the moment and embrace each one life can give you, an almost infinite well of moments in every single day is available to you. I am so happy i had teachers who pointed this out to me and that i was able to listen. I love getting to the end of a day and not being able to fathom that the morning was in the same 24 hour period. I love a conversation of an hour that has the weight of a year. There is so much. Time is indeed able to explode or contract but it depends on where you put your focus. And for god's sake, stop giving word to the fact that you feel old and that time is flying by. Words have power and they can change your life.
Embrace the moment my friends, you will be glad you did.
