Time is more than a clock, it's an experience...........

What is time?

Is it the ''indefinite continued progress of existence

and events in the past, present and the future regarded

as a whole''?

Or is time what the clocks(any kind thereof) tell us?

Thing is, time as experienced and time as measured are

two very different matters.

An hour spent in for example: a dentist chair, in solitary confinement,

in a traffic queue, waiting for a result at the doctors, waiting

for a child to return home, waiting for a partner/friend/etc. to call,

etc.etc. can feel very different to an hour of having fun.

The clock may tell us that an hour has passed, but often, as during

the above examples, we experience time as passing markedly slower

than when we are doing something we enjoy.

According to the Persian philosopher Avicenna ''time is merely

a feature of our memories and expectations''.

I think he has a point. Consider how with mere thoughts

we can ''time travel'', and with that I mean that at any point in time

we can revisit a memory from the past by bringing it forth with a mere thought.

We can also ''travel'' forward in time by envisaging what we expect will

take place. ''I have booked my trip to Hawaii for next month, but in my

mind I am already there sipping a pina colada".

According to some, we find it much harder to be truly present

in the here and now, than to either be reflecting on the past 

or speculating about the future.

And the reason for this, some say, is because we are hard-wired

to do so for evolutionary/survival purposes. We learn from the past

which helps us to predict and plan for what may come in the future.

So, when do we actually get to live in the now then?

This can be problematic, because according to some, our intelligent

cognition finds it hard to view time as anything other than

 a continuous and linear process. A millisecond before the 

present moment is already the past, and a millisecond after, is

already the future.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist suggests that ''Life is available

only in the present moment.'' 

In one of Thich Nhat Hanh books (forget which one) I read something

 that has helped me better understand what living in the

here and now/present means.

''When you eat or drink something, focus all your

attention on the taste. If the mind wanders, bring

it back to the taste.''

Easy, I thought. Not so much. I discovered that pin-pointing my

attention for an extended period of time on only one sense(taste),

can be quite tricky.

But, it worked. I have never tasted an apple so delicious.

Allowing the taste of the apple to take over my mind

completely I experienced the now.

The experience itself.

(Of course once I finished the apple, the mind started to wander again.)

Time, it seems to me, is mostly experienced subjectively.

Time can fly or it can drag.

Time can be saved or it can be lost.

Time can be squandered or it can be treasured.

Time can heal all wounds or it can harden a heart.

You can be out of time or just in time.

You can waste time or you can spend time.

You can make good time or run out of time.

You can have a hard time or you can have an easy time.

You can have a wonderful time or an awful time.

''Until you value yourself, you won't value your time.

Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.''

(M. Scott Peck)

about the painting: acrylic on canvas, painted only with a small roller, no brush.

Next to the man's head on the right side you can see a man's face,

which is what the old prisoner looked like when he was first interned.