What were you doing 3 years ago today? (Check your phone and share a picture with meāor not š) It was exactly 3 years ago today that I took this picture on my way home (...I'm not so sure returning from where, probably a friend's place):
I remember at 22 I would constantly tell myself 'I can gain something extra by extending my 24h into the dark' (ā¦I still live by this some days) and that night was the perfect depiction of it: The train was eerily empty, time and stillness co-existing in the S-Bahn cartāmeanwhile I felt like there was so much space for my presence and thoughts to expand. After a long day, on that S-Bahn I still felt like I had all the time in the world.
Do you feel like you had more or less time 3 years ago, compared to now?
Since launching the newsletter I've spoken to a lot of friends who also started their own personal project during the pandemic. 'It's a good use of time'; 'I have more time these days'ātend to be the most frequently shared thoughts. I've been wondering whether this is really because:
Objectively speaking, as public spaces and gathering are put on hold (at least here in Berlin, noticeably so), we've allowed ourselves to redefine the value of 'free roaming time' in confined but personal spacesā that is, at least to me, a freeing sense of sudden gain, both temporally and in the context of control;
OR āwhether you've unwillingly merged your living and work space to one and drown yourself in everyday mundane busyness; or you've caught yourself attending to the clock ticking as a reminder that you can't meet your loved ones and friends until god knows whenāwe've collectively become more, for better or worse, aware and impatient of the flow of time (that is btw, undisturbed by the pandemic), such that it's forced us to re-evaluate how much we're willing to come to terms with unavoidable temporal loss?
People always say as you grow older youāll start feeling more like you're running out of time. Yet so much of this also relies on how we define and well, keep track of this seemingly concrete measure of experience. What does running out of time mean? Does reaching 'milestones' and concrete achievements in our ageing path really help us measure and navigate this easier? How good are we really, as timekeepers go?
Relativity of time can't be untangled with our ever-changing sensitivity to its presence, value and also scarcity. I've spent several hoursāor more, not sureāgetting lost in these following explorations of time, and hope you will join me somewhere in the midst of it too.
ps. 1) Iāve switched to Substack as it allows publishing online and discussions w/o Facebook or other social media platforms. This removes the styling and customisation :( but would help me focus on the content more. Feel free to share the link or leave your thoughts in the comments š 2) as most of you seem to be more interested in my rambles than links Iāve adjusted the ratio and restrain from including literally everything I found interesting on the internet. :D
Art & Culture
š¹ āMacro Timelapse of Plantsā by Daniel Csobot
Natureās wonders condensed into 2 minutes of serenity.š§” So much of this is usually concealed by our daily choice of time unit and limited by the way our bodies experience the world. It also left me thinking how arrogantly impatient humans can be sometimes compared to rest of planet earth (doesnāt the format of time lapse speak for itself?!) Perhaps itās because nature never gets troubled by time?
š¹ āWalking in Hong Kong at rainy nightā
Take an atmospheric walk and wander in one of the busiest districts of Hong Kong on a rainy nightāa city where fluorescent signs and billboards dissimulate the meaning of day and night, where the loss and gain of every minute never seem to hold down the pace of pedestrians. (19:40 was my favourite part)
š§ Foolās Day - Blur
Ngl, I only thought of this song because I was searching for the term 'Blursday' (temporal disfiguration, something a lot of us experience these days). A belated Aprilās fool day tune to come down and moodily wake up to the absurdity of mundane day-to-day.
Society
š£ Queer Time: The Alternative to āAdultingā
I first came across this theory through PhilosophyTube on YT and it hit homeāit is the idea that queer individuals experience time differently because theyāre less adhered to chronological, traditional markers of life and entrance of adulthood, such as pregnancy and marriage (and many more).
ā³ 4 Types of Cultural Time Orientation & Time Perception
Do you see time and life as linear or cyclical? Do you navigate life with focus on the past, now or the future? Itās fascinating to think how our language and culture play such a huge role in shaping the way we value, conceptualise and orientate the same 24 hours we all share (ā¦or level of reincarnation. It depends.)
Science & Technology
š¹ Entangled Atom Clock (Anton Petrov)
A dive into the history of timekeepingāfrom the Egyptians to how the atom clock is now the closestālike literally just a few shifts of atoms awayāto absolute accuracy weāre able to attain with time-keeping machines. Which also got me thinking switching to a water clock would provide me a handful of reasonable excuses to being late (āSorry! Knocked over my bucket/humidity was low/was thirsty last night, ughā)
š£ Time perception without clocks (Neurobanter)
From another perspective, how time is interpreted in our psyche is really the interplay between external events and the pacemakers in our physical body. āā¦one specific aspect of time perception ā duration estimation ā is based on theĀ rate of accumulation of salient events in other perceptual modalities. More salient changes, longer estimated durations.ā
Self
šŖ The Neuropsychology of How Time Perception Modulates Our Experience of Self
Itās always a good reminder that time is one and all within us when the ability, or intention to keep track of it loses significance: āIn extraordinary states of consciousness ā moments of shock, meditation, sudden mystical experiences, near-death experiences, under the influence of drugs ā temporal consciousness is fundamentally alteredā¦In these extreme circumstances, time and concepts of space and self are modulated together ā intensified or weakened together. But in more ordinary situations, too, such as boredom, the experience of flow, and idleness, time and self are collectively altered.ā
#2 running out of time š°
Have you heard about the French Deep Time project? It is really interesting. A group of 15 volunteers have just re-emerged after spending 40 days in a cave to study links between the brain and time. https://deeptime.fr/en/
For me in my 6Os, getting older is not about running out of time but feeling that time āmovesā at a different, much faster, speed. I was wondering why and came up with this analogy: when you have a narrow range of data to plot on a graph, the axis scales can be set so that each increment is relatively small. However, when you have more data over a wider range, the scale has to be adjusted accordingly and each increment is now much greater. It allows to keep a sense of the overall trend but at the cost of details. I think our brain has similar limitations in terms of memory storage. Over a longer period of time, it has to adjust its scale, leaving out ādetailsā , and, by doing so, it gives us a feeling of time moving faster.