How to Resurrect Time

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí

I read Matt Haig’s haunting and exquistently written novel “How to Stop Time” in the fall of 2020 - a time of massive transformation of my external life (as documented in my book, “Essays from a Pandemic”.) In Haig’s novel, the protaganist has a rare genetic anamoly where he only ages 10 years every 100 calendars years. This, of course, totally changes his relationship with time - and his relationships with intimate partners, children, grandchildren, and his work.

Until the past 3 years, I’ve always wanted to speed up time. I hated (and sometimes still do) waiting. And much of life was waiting for time to pass. I remember the hands of the big clock in the classroom moving at a glacial pace. Or days working in the hayfields at the ranch where time was distorted by the heat and the hay dust to feel like one hour for every one actual minute. I can count hundreds of other times as an adult where I felt like I was trapped in an hourglass where there were boulders instead of sand.

Now at 52, I find myself wanting to slow time down - but on command. I find myself trying to grasp the river of life in my hand; to hold on to moments and then mourning them when they pass. I would love to pause time in many moments in my partnership with Virginia, or moments with family and friends. But there’s some inconsisitency here. I want to slow down time but I also waste it. I’ve learned in recent months that drama is not just a thief of joy, it’s a thief of time. I mourned the lost time and energy spent on unnecessary inner and outer conflict, angst, and tension. Now, having got to the root causes and added new practices, I’ve found myself with much more present moment awareness.

In present moment awareness, time really isn’t a thing. It’s not that time is suspended. It’s that it just isn’t that important. It is used to mark the passage of moments but not define the moments. I believe that’s because present moment awareness invites Presence; the same divine force that created the universe. In the presence of Presence, time is a continuum; a river of moments.

“Time is an illusion.”
― Albert Einstein