Dancing Outside of Time

Have you ever wondered why you can pick up where you left off in a conversation with really good friends, even if distance and time separate you?

Have you ever considered why time seems to fly when you spend time with someone you truly love?

Researchers will tell you it is because your time perception is skewed by desire, expectation for reward and motivation to achieve a goal.

But I have another theory.

We live in two systems: the first arranges our lives around the clock: 8 am breakfast meeting; 10 am Skype call; noon lunch meeting and don’t-forget-to-pick-the-kids-up-after-soccer-practice this afternoon. It is a structured existence in which we operate much like machines. 

Only we aren’t machines. We are living, breathing human beings with feelings.

The second system relates to our emotional world. Because love is the strongest emotion, it suspends time altogether, making the clock, and everything bound to it, absolutely irrelevant. We literally dance outside of time when we spend it with people who give us positive emotions.

Time is a construct, an organizing principle that alleviates commercial trade. It isn’t real. And yet we live as if it were. When love enters the picture, its power overrides our sense of time crunch, hurriedness and desperate lunge to the finish line. All of it fades into the background when we experience the wonders of love.

It explains why I can talk to my best friend for two hours straight while it feels like twenty minutes. Or why a week spent with my love feels like an hour. Or why a chat with my mom whizzes by at the speed of light.

The ties that bind us feed our souls.

The only solution I’ve found to clock combat is to love time itself. Even though it is something we’ve made up — like an imaginary friend — it feels real to us. If we embrace time as a friend, it will give back to us just as our real friends do.

And then we can all dance in and out of time – together.

 

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