The time has come, the walrus said...

Today I read an article on BBC news that I really liked.

Slowing down time

Now, as many know, I've always maintained that time is simply a concept - therefore fluid, not linear and certainly not absolute. More than anything, I think time or timeliness is more a matter of respecting those around you, and less a matter of making the most out of one's life. This article seems to agree.

Maybe it's just me, but somehow when I schedule my time in a day, the day seems to pass by faster. Now that's great when you're sitting in an office, or you're in school, waiting for exams to pass, I grant you. I think it's because when we make compartments like that, we're basically living from block to block. And here again, we take linear time and change it (or rather, our perception of it) to suit our needs.

Why then, is it odd (to those that believe in absolute linearity) when people go the other day? Take time, and de-linearize it? If time is a concept, then we, as creators of that concept should be able to play with it. Spending exactly one hour and thirty-five minutes in a gym should essentially serve the same (if not a higher) purpose as spending an evening wandering about your neighbourhood market.

The other aspect the article talks about - is the relative perception of time between that of a child and an adult. I remember, as a kid, being absolutely fascinated by everything. When I was a kid, I had to touch everything I saw. Drove my mother batty sometimes. However, for me, it was extremely important to experience everything using as much sensory input as possible - I'd smell things, touch them, look at them, so I could get a complete picture. Maybe it comes from being a visual person, I don't know, my brother isn't and I've never seen him being as curious as I was.

Of course, this curiosity led to a fair amount of mishaps, I've wandered off numerous times, causing many moments of sheer panic for mater dear, I've burned, cut and otherwise injured myself, trying to touch things I oughtn't (touching the hot side of irons often, for some reason - burned my palm more times than I can count), and so on.

Anyway, the point after all this meandering, is that children experience things differently than grownups. My friend's son, Ben, spent almost an entire evening at my house yesterday, staring at the CN tower changing colors. He even had his dinner while watching it. I love my view, but I don't think I've ever done that. My evening flew by in a flurry of cooking and hosting and other things, but I'm sure his took its sweet time.

There's no moral to this post really, just that I continue to think that time is fluid and even though I'm trying to be a little grown up and respect the space others give me in their lives, I don't plan to become any more linear anytime soon.