Rebellious Thoughts #47 - 🤘 Don't let time tick away

Hey Rebels!

As always, I promise to provoke you in less than 5 min once a week so that you can stay adaptable and on top of your game.

YEW!

Let’s get into today’s:

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of time.

In my years of exploring physics, the simplicity of what I thought time was became a complex and difficult concept to get my head around.

Turns out time is not just ticking away.
And even though there seems to be an arrow pointing in a “direction”, it’s all relative.

When I read Einstein’s theory of general relativity in which he explains gravity as curving spacetime and time passing slower on the surface of a massive object like Earth and slower the further away you got (like a satellite) it blew my mind!

Our GPS works thanks to this discovery.

Or the example that if you travel at speed, time passes slower than if you stay on the ground… I calculated that with all my travel I am slightly younger than my pretty wife cos I have spent more time on a plane at speed than her (I think it’s not even a few seconds… but I am younger!)

Time observed from a physical sense is super interesting, but observed from an experiential sense is even more fascinating.

The way time is experienced culturally makes my pretty wife hate how spontaneous and in-the-moment things are planned in Argentina and how precise and premeditated things are planned in Australia.

Let me explain:

We are in Argentina and pretty wife asks me..

PW: what’s happening tonight….?

Husband (me): I think my mates are coming

PW: what do you mean “you think”? are they or not?

Husband: Well yeah very likely -

PW: what time are they coming?

husband: tonight for dinner

PW: what time is that?

Husband: I don’t know like 10 pm

PW: so I get ready for 10?

Husband: Yeah around then

PE: what time are we eating?

Husband: after they arrive.

PW: but who’s coming?

Husband: Don’t know exactly.

Hahahahhaa….. drives pretty wife crazy!

And having lived in Australia now for more than 1/2 of my life I can see how this would be so frustrating. But for some reason when I am there, it feels completely normal to me and perfectly organised.

Pretty wife experiences it as a waste of time. I see it as a perfect use of time.

In Australia that same dinner would have been organised 2 weeks in advance and everyone knows exactly what they are bringing, who is coming and what time dinner will be ready.

When I am in Argentina the present feels very present and the future feels unplanned (which is great to feel the moment of time, but shit for predicting anything).

A few years ago I read a beautiful book by Eagleman called Brain - if my memory doesn’t fail me, part of the premise of the book was his fascination with accidents and time.

You know when you fall off a bike or a major event X happens, that time seems to slow down?
Everything happens in slow motion, doesn’t it?

Turns out your brain exposed to stimuli that is not the ordinary, turns on a bunch of extra functions and records in super high definition what is occurring.
That thick recording is what makes us feel that time slowed down.

When we travel, even if we go away for a couple of days, it feels to us like we’ve been away for weeks. The same phenomenon is taking place, you expose your brain to new smells, sounds, taste, landscapes and your brain records more information just in case :-)

So, if like me at 45 you feel that time is passing you by - that days and weeks and months simply disappear, all you need to do to slow down time is expose yourself to novelty.

Anything new will trigger your brain to record more, and you to perceive time passing slower.

Love

Gus

P.S. Okay. It’s happening.
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