Slowing Down Time

Last ten years life has been pretty busy. Packed daily schedules with activities planned from the wake of dawn till the crack of the night sky. I have produced great results and achieved very cool things but also it feels like life has just flown by. It feels like my youth years are already up and another few years and I will be looking at old age. I guess there is nothing wrong with life in the fast lane, I definitely prefer this over a boring life where I have no purpose and nothing to do. But it does feel like I have missed the happy moments when they arrived or the good times when I was living them or sitting with the bad times and used them to level up and if only if there was a way to slow life down I cherish these moments more. These days it feels like all feelings happy or sad are very ephemeral and theres always another task to do or a goal to run after and there is no time to sit and feel or to sit and think. And it generally feels like life is slipping by like quick sand in an hour glass. Hours feel like minutes and days feel like hours and there is never enough time.

When we were younger, summer vacations felt like years. We played football till our knees hurt not until the clock turned 7. In college after the classes, we walked around until we were too hungry or it was too dark. Days were long and semesters were longer. So in an effort to feel again and escape the clockwork every so once in a while, something that I have started doing is journaling once a week where I just look back on my week and also think about what lies ahead in the week after. Its a really good pause to reflect and plan and greatly helps absorb what really happened in the week before. I also really like to abstain from my routine on Sundays to give my brain a little bit of change. So other than a couple of chores I welcome new plans and activities on Sundays. Those catch ups or spontaneous drives, all are very attractive.

Growing up I also never really understood why my parents never wanted to do anything on vacations. I was very puzzled why they would travel all this way to just sleep or aimlessly walk around. Now I know for them it was just a way to escape the routine. Escape the time compression. For them planning out activities and being “busy” on the vacation really beat the purpose of the vacation. And I do see now how vacations out of your routine can help slow time down as long as you dont get carried away with the pressure of sight seeing or doing something all the time. So now I believe in a healthy balance of activities and just not doing anything while on vacations as the best policy.

Another thing that helps slow time down is trying something new. When you do something new your brain gets kicked out of the autopilot and becomes fully conscious to understand and learn the new activity. I have recently tried padel, flying a drone, trying korean barbecue and all of them helped slow time down and helped me be in the moment. Its really hard to be in the moment in the activities I do everyday like driving or cooking breakfast or working out in the gym. Although ideally I am able to be fully focussed and in the moment even during those activities since it conserves energy and also increases the quality of that task. This part is work in progress!