Changes in the Way We Experience
Time byCynthia
Sue Larson September 4,
2000
"Time is too slow for those who
wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is
eternity."
- Henry Van Dyke
One of the ways we can tell that reality has shifting is to
notice that our experience of time is not linear and sequential as usual,
but instead is speeding up, slowing down, or stopping. In some cases,
cross-time communication is also possible.
All through my life I've felt that time does not move mechanically, but
seems instead to behave organically, as something alive and responsive to
how I am feeling. There is great truth to the observation that eternity
can be found when we are feeling our greatest sense of love.
I have also witnessed some amazing changes in the way I usually experience
time, which I've written about in the following articles:
I Felt Time Slow to a Stop
When I was too far away to catch my falling baby as she hurtled head-first
towards a marble floor, I was glad to experience time slowing to a stop.
I Kept A Promise to My Friend As He Died
My friend once asked me to promise him to party when he died... and I said
I'd do my best. How I kept this promise astonishes even
me.
After these experiences and many others, I no longer assume
that time behaves in linear fashion. I do not believe that time always
moves at the same rate -- and I'm not the only one who feels this way.
In a survey I conducted of 395 individuals in April 2000, 86% of the
respondants reported that "I've experienced time seem to slow down, stop,
or speed up." This closely matches any informal survey you might conduct
with your friends and family -- most of us do not experience time as moving
mechanically forward.
Some recent studies have shown that people are able to effectively alter
the past from the present, which raises the humorous concern:
"The trouble with our
times is that the future is not what it used to be."
-Paul Valery
Indeed, there are many well-documented cases of timewalkers,
who have walked back in time. I have posted one such story here at
Themestream, which describes a time that four teenaged girls walked through
Moundsville at midnight... and found themselves mysteriously transported
back into the 1800's. When they returned to their normal time half an hour
later, they were covered with dust, and seemed to appear in a place where
two people had just been searching for them moments earlier.
