Time Traveling

I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately. How it passes, how it moves, how it expands and contracts.

I have, for quite awhile, been struck by a particular way of looking at the world that I read about on the Humans of New York blog, of all places. The woman being interviewed explained her theory like this: "We are on earth of a finite amount of time. And time is a manmade perception. And we perceive time passing through change--seasons, aging, things like that. So to expand our time on earth, we must incite as much change in our lives as possible."

As a person who is obstinately against spontaneity or change of any sort, this insight was monumental for me. To even entertain the idea that change is not only good, but actually necessary, to live a fulfilling life, required a complete 180 degree turn. Yet this bit of wisdom has allowed me to embrace new and sometimes uncomfortable experiences in my life, and studying abroad has been the newest and most uncomfortable one to date.

Time, without a doubt, passes differently here in England. Did you know that until the latter part of the 18^th century, Oxford was in a different time zone than everyone else? Five minutes behind GMT, apparently. Back in the day, the time in each city was determined by a local sundial, making the local time at neighboring towns vary because of the sun's location and the shape and rotation of the earth. The clock tower in Oxford would toll five minutes after the one in London, and students would begin their exams. It wasn't until trains were invented that all zones became standardized, in order for arrival and departure times to be more precise.

People also move at different paces, depending on the place. People walk very fast in Oxford; the entire city is bustling by 8 AM and doesn’t slow down until well after midnight. Back home, people move at a more meandering pace, and I think we take more time to appreciate little things, like a sunset or a beautiful day. Yet the opposite is also true. Americans have a very strict sense of time, as exemplified by the fact that everyone in our group arrived fifteen minutes before the program’s orientation was scheduled to start. The British, in typical European fashion, have a very loose sense of time, as exemplified by the fact that the orientation started twenty minutes behind schedule and ended half an hour late.

Human perception of time is the least precise of all. The day I arrived in Oxford felt like the longest and shortest day of my life. Between boarding the plane, dragging my luggage around Heathrow to find my bus, riding the bus to Oxford, and then dragging my luggage around again—this time through Gloucester Green—to catch a cab to my new house, it felt like a whole day should have passed. At the same time, the newness of it all had me so fascinated and so ready to explore that I was disappointed when, all too soon, the sun began to set on my first day.

All of this is to say, time is completely relative to our own perception. It speeds up and slows down, lingers on moments and completely erases others, leaps ahead and grinds to a halt, and most of the time, we are unaware of its passing. Yet we can all expand the time we have here on earth by embracing every new moment as an opportunity for possibility and change.

With that in mind, I am entirely focused on being in the present moment this semester. I have spent too much time reminiscing on the past or looking forward to the future. Now that I am in such an incredible, new place, getting ready to have so many indescribable, new memories, I want to appreciate what is happening right now. After all, the past, present, and future are not mutually exclusive, nor does one bar the way for the other; rather, each one is a comma—a pause—before we are allowed to move forward again.

Right now, I want more than anything to pause.