A Race With Time

When it comes to friends, family and the ones we love, we all have one common experience – time flies faster when we are with them. We always wish we had more time to spend with them. But in another scenario, if we are sitting in a boring lecture, we keep looking at the watch waiting for lecture to end soon. Why is it that time appears to be speed up and down depending upon the situation we are in? Obviously, all the watches we look at, aren’t defective. Then how does this happen?Well, our watch is perfectly fine and the pace of time is also constant. The only thing that changes is how we perceive time. When we are spending quality time with our friends, we intend time to never end so soon. There are different kind of perceptions:

“This time will end sooner or later”

We already accept the limitation of time but want it to end not any sooner. So, we plant this idea in our mind that time is really not enough and we will fall short of it sooner or later. This idea itself makes us feel short of time, although we might actually have enough. So, it feels like time flies faster.

And when we are doing something we don’t like doing, we keep waiting for time to end soon and when it doesn’t, it feels like the end is too far away and won’t come so easy. The idea is further refined when we keep looking at the watch every 5 mins expecting that it’s 10 mins past. So, here time seems to be slower than usual.

“Quality time doesn’t need to be tracked”

We don’t want to keep track of time when we are having fun. We tell ourselves that we don’t need to look at our watches while we are having fun. So, even if we notice the time on our watch, it will be after a long while, which means not that frequent. For example, after 1 pm, we look at the watch directly at 4 pm and wonder how long it has been but seemed so short.
Contrary to that, if we are stuck in some boring task, we will notice that we will want to know the time more frequently. That’s because we want that boring activity to end soon, so we make sure we keep track of time more frequently in order to make sure that when it ends, we don’t have to sit any longer and leave. Here, time seems to crawl slower than normal.

“Judging from past and worrying about future”

The time spent well with the best people in our lives is the treasure no one should let go. Sometimes, we look at our past and judge that the time we are about to spend will fall short and therefore, cancel our plans. Sometimes, we are too worried about the limitations, like reaching back home before 11, that we fail to cherish the wonderful moments we had together. These kind of thoughts limit our understanding of time and makes us lose track of actual time we spent. So, it seems faster or slower based on our perception.

So what exactly happens to time? Is it really constant? Well, we are not quite certain about that yet and it’s a concept little challenging to explain. So let’s keep that discussion for some other time. For now, the only thing we must keep in mind is that when we spend time with our loved ones, we should keep our watches away and be in that moment, making memories, stories, wishes, dreams, and ideas together.

Thanks for your valuable time 😉