Time Is On My Side
> Writing to my blog 5 days a week, I like to publish each day’s entry between 6-7 A.M. It’s 10 A.M. and I’m just beginning to write this so it has me thinking about the concept of time; how we perceive it and how we respond to it.
Recently I read that the human brain can process 24 “flickers” a minute. A “flicker” is the rate at which independent images or occurrences are registered by the brain. Once you get beyond 24 flickers per second…well, that’s how movies are made. Today, by way of electronics and quantum physics, we have reached a point where computer chips pass on information at a rate of 100 GHz per second! A “hertz” is a unit of measurement, a frequency, at which energy is transmitted. One MHz is 10 to the 6th power. 2 MHz would be 100 million pieces of data per second. One GHz is 10 to the 9th power. It’s quite literally mind-boggling…incomprehensible to the human brain.
How does all this speed impact our everyday lives? It’s the source of most of the stress and illness we experience. The stress comes from our efforts to keep pace with the technology. The illness comes from that plus, our almost complete removal from Nature…from all things “natural.” If you have any doubt about it, just head outside and take a walk in a park or wooded area the next time you’re about to scream at work. The calming effect of removing yourself from the rate of speed, the frequency, of the technological pace of things is immediate and undeniable.
But I digress. Let’s get back to this blog entry and the pressure I was feeling for “running late.”
Actually, I’ve been running late most of my life. I went to college at age 24 and graduated at 27. I went to law school at 33 and graduated at 37. I married at 41 and we adopted a child when I was 45. At age 54 I stopped practicing law and went in search of a new career. Still searching, although the search created the room for me to realize that I’m a writer and so…here we are…in the Now…right on time.
Each of us has our own timetable for living our lives. While I know there are people who actually sit down and make “5 and 10 year plans” for their future…as the saying goes, “we plan and God laughs.” Life has a way of delivering opportunities and challenges that open doors and create obstacles unimagined by those who plan. So, from my experience, it’s best to live life fully in the Now, which more times than not means adjusting to what’s presented…which is more often than not…the unintended. It’s really how we get to live our creativity through adaptability.
Besides, Einstein taught us that time is relative. So, relatively speaking, this blog is right on time and so is the rest of life.
The next time you’re feeling stressed, take a walk outside, come back in, re-read this blog, then attend to whatever is in front of you at the moment. Let go of the rest of it. Assuming you’d want to…you couldn’t wrap your brain around it anyway.
I can assue you, your life will turn out just fine and, oh yes, on time.