8th grade 6th period Altered Time

How we experience threads of time and how another does, hopefully allows us each to value our experience and that of another. One of the basic differences in individuals, we realize, is that we don’t experience time the same. How we speak about procrastination or over-working an idea states something about how we relate to time. The challenge not to conform to the set definition of time encourages us to reclaim our own cadence. In so doing we sense a choice as to how fast or slow we engage over a given period of time.

Time Exercise#4: Play with Cadence

How about playing with errands for a while? Let’s play with household tasks. I don’t mean the actual task, I mean the time, let’s play with the time we spend. Decide ahead of time and a bit artificially to explore cadence by setting up a few unpleasant tasks and play with the time used to accomplish them. Don’t use normal thinking about time to set goals. In play time we could complete the task in no time or in all the time depending on which would allow us to maximize awareness, imagination and humor. Just take an activity and reset the cadence up or down. Now engage and complete some part of it. See what aspect of it can offer up gratefulness or joy. Mining joy suggests that how we approach a task and how we hold intention, imagination and humor influence what we call fun. What aspect engages imagination? See where the humor expresses itself.

I wonder if while we approach time, we can register it with other senses. And I wonder if there is a sensation of time that we sense in ourselves with an organ we don’t classify under the classic senses. Short-term memory functions might be under more conscious control than we at first expect. Times fluid nature peaks out. It seems quite remarkable that two people can experience the same event with separate cadences so that for one it completes too soon and for the other it stretches too long. Let’s play with this to our advantage.

I encourage anticipation as part of any longed for event. That stretches the time. I have begun to consciously make travel time part of the vacation, including special games to mark time. Travel lends itself to generating souvenirs. We can also experiment with the end of the trip. Notice when we switch out of the mode of being away. Compare how we do this depending on how long we travel. I think it humorous that the last part of a week long vacation can begin before the final weekend, when normally the weekend would be a full respite in it’s own right. Reclaim respites within respites!