How the Pandemic Upended our Perception of Time

[Jundo]

A little article on the pandemic and its effects on our perceptions of time, maybe worth a little time.

Yes, Zazen also lets us experience the fluid malleability of time!

Think back to life before stay-at-home orders. Does it feel like just yesterday? Or does it seem like ages ago — like some distant era?

Of course, time is precise. It takes 23.9 hours for the Earth to make one rotation on its axis. But that's not how we experience time. Instead, internally, it's often something we feel or sense, rather than objectively measure.

It turns out our emotional state tends to play a big role in our perception of time — a dynamic that I've studied for 10 years. Much research has shown that relative to an emotional negative state, a positive one makes time appear to pass more quickly.

Back in the early days of the pandemic, when it became clear that the virus would upend our everyday lives, it wasn't a stretch to assume that the coming weeks and months would be an emotional roller coaster.

Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, my team and I developed a smartphone application to document the emotions, perceptions and behaviors of Americans during the pandemic on a month-by-month basis. We've been able to track the extent to which Americans' internal clocks went haywire — and explore why this might have happened.

...

There's truth to the aphorism "time flies when you're having fun." On the other hand, the opposite seems to occur when we're scared, sad or anxious. ...

... If you felt like time slowed down during the early days of the pandemic, you weren't alone.

In April, we asked 1,000 Americans how time seemed to be passing during March. About half said they felt time dragged and a quarter indicated that time passed more quickly than normal. The remaining quarter reported that they didn't experience a change in the passage of time.

Whether time slowed or sped up was most closely related to people's emotions. Those who reported that they were most nervous or stressed also indicated that time passed more slowly, while those who felt happy or glad tended to experience time passing more quickly.... In April, about 10% of our sample moved from feeling like time dragged to feeling like time flew. More people were feeling relaxed and calm, and interestingly, it was these positive feelings, along with the perception of time flying, that predicted whether people would engage in social distancing. So it's possible that people's improved mood and the shift in their perception of time motivated their willingness to socially distance.

Still, there was a big chunk who felt — and probably still feel — that time is dragging.

Fortunately, if you feel this way, you can do something about it. Exercise, hobbies and a routine help speed up your perception of time. Sure, it might not "fly by," but its pace could quicken just enough to make you feel a little better.

https://www.livescience.com/pandemic...n-of-time.html

If you have another moment to spare, in my new book, "ZEN of the FUTURE!," I foresee devises that will help us slow down our experience of time when we want (speed it up too). So, just like tv shows have been able to add an additional commercial or two for old re-runs but speeding up play just below the point of notice, we might slow down our sense of passing time. The result would a de facto life extension. For example, if our actual life expectancy was 85, but we could experience passing time just 20% slower like hitting the "slow play" button on youtube, our experience of life would actually be over 100 years! (Of course, you would have to get used to the gap in driving the car ... although perhaps safer as more reaction time? ... and pouring the milk might be a little slow and "thick," but I think the brain would adapt).

Yes, it might take a little getting used to ... but the result is not bad either ...

Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven (Slowed Down)



TBS Speeds up Seinfeld 9.0 Percent



Of course, we might go too far, but still kinda cool ...

Yesterday - The Beatles 800% Slower



Gassho, J

Saaaaaatooooooooooooooooodaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaayLAAAAAAAAAAAAH

[Meitou]

As soon as my eyes read the word 'science', my brain freezes and can't seem to absorb anything, but from a layperson point of view, during our lockdown, time for me seemed to open in a non linear way, like a flower bud unfurling and opening into a vast open space. It was only as we neared the end that this changed back, closing down into something more traditional, linear. The last week seemed to race by, and one morning I remember thinking that I had only a few more days of freedom, which some may find curious, but I know I wasn't alone in that.
I found out a few years ago that I have an interesting (to me) condition called synesthesia. Not one of the more interesting forms, but in the way I visualise time in space, the week as a kind of linear set of shapes, and the year as a circle with Christmas at the top of the circle and my birthday at the bottom. Listing years, I see different shapes, one pattern from the year of my birth, another from the 20th century, and then different ones for anything before 1900. I have also always assigned gender to numbers.
Looking back now to the beginning of the lockdown period, there were phases of opening, I think seeing this was really the start of the unfurling of the flower for me, as I became aware of the first time in my life of being part of a national identity. It was a surprising and beautiful moment.
Jacopo Mastrangelo, day 15 of the lockdown, Piazza Navarra, Rome.



Gassho
Meitou
Sattoday lah

[Onka]

The past 3 months has been a blur. Timelines and experiences are not easy to recall in order yet there have been innumerable moments captured. Moment by moment like photography frames some have had such impact that they won't be easily forgotten. I guess that means that my experience of time during the pandemic has been both fast and slow.
Gassho
Onka
ST


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[Jundo]

As soon as my eyes read the word 'science', my brain freezes and can't seem to absorb anything ...

I have removed the word "science" from the title.

I am reminded of the Greek distinction between "Chronos" .... chronological, sequential times of the hour glass and calendar ... and "Kairos" ... more like "timing, human time."

Gassho, J

STLah

[Tairin]

I love that version of Yesterday. It sounds awesome.

For me the past 3 months have been a blur. I am fortunate to be able to do my job from home without compromising. The past 3 months have just happened to correspond to the busiest 3 months of work I’ve had in a few years. So while some people have been idled due to COVID19 shutdowns I’ve actually been busier than normal. Many of my coworkers ended up with a similar situation.


Tairi
Sat today and lah

[Meitou]

I have removed the word "science" from the title.

I am reminded of the Greek distinction between "Chronos" .... chronological, sequential times of the hour glass and calendar ... and "Kairos" ... more like "timing, human time."

Gassho, J

STLah

Thank you Jundo for catering to the dumbest

I was reminded of this, particularly as I'm currently re-reading Ruth Ozeki's A Tale For the Time Being ..

An ancient buddha said:

For the time being stand on top of the highest peak.
For the time being proceed along the bottom of the deepest ocean.
For the time being three heads and eight arms.
For the time being an eight- or sixteen-foot body.
For the time being a staff or whisk.
For the time being a pillar or lantern.
For the time being the sons of Zhang and Li.
For the time being the earth and sky.

Master Dogen.

Gassho
Meitou
sattoday lah

[Jakuden]

That’s funny, if I see “Science” I gravitate toward a post and the feeling of familiarity the word generates.

Instead my brain tries to freeze and disconnect when it sees long names and words in other languages which makes some aspects of Buddhist study very challenging.

Gassho
Jakuden
SatToday


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[Geika]

I am, instead, feeling like it's starting all over again. We are having a worrying spike in cases and I am preparing to quarantine again for another couple of months. The way time feels this year is as if this year is not really happening, and I am simply waiting it out. Only the weather changes.

Gassho
Sat today, lah

[Seikan]

For me the past 3 months have been a blur. I am fortunate to be able to do my job from home without compromising. The past 3 months have just happened to correspond to the busiest 3 months of work I’ve had in a few years. So while some people have been idled due to COVID19 shutdowns I’ve actually been busier than normal.

Tairin,

Same here. I am truly fortunate and very grateful to be able to work from home. The flipside is that my co-workers and I have also been even busier than usual as it is far too easy to jump from one online meeting to another without having to schedule in time to walk between rooms, buildings, etc. It is also more difficult to break up the monotony of standing in front of my computer all day. And now that the rest of my family is off for summer break, my new work environment is suddenly quite distracting.

While the weeks are flying by almost too quickly for me, I appreciate being able to sit with folks here most every night as it is my number one means of slowing back down after a hectic day.

No matter what, I can't complain as my family is currently in a better situation than so many others here and around the globe. I truly hope for a speedy end to this pandemic.

Metta and good health to you all!

Gassho,
Rob

SatToday


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[Jundo]

A wonderful public radio episode about time(s) which I recommend, available for download. It has a segment with more about the Greek sense of Chronos" and "Kairos" ...

... also I particularly recommend an amazing interview about Australian aboriginal "dream" time ... cosmologist Brian Swimm on how clocks changed our relationship to time ... living lifeforms thousands and thousands of years old and more ...

Time Beyond The Clock
https://www.ttbook.org/show/time-beyond-clock

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

The aboriginal sense of dreaming time strikes me as having much in common with Master Dogen's sense of time(s). From the above podcast ...

The [aboriginal] dreaming was all about ... the perfection of the world as it existed in the internal moment. So there's something about dreaming that connects you to that, that origin to that first moment. And you somehow, you're connected with that past many eons ago. That's exactly the point is that there is no sense of separation between the moment in time when the ancestors brought the world into being and all of human activity, the entire thrust of human intellectual and spiritual effort is not to change the world or to change yourself, but to ... keep the world exactly as it was at the time of the first dawn. And it's as if every single intellectual impulse in the Western philosophical and technological tradition had gone into maintaining the garden of Eden exactly as it was, each shrub ..., perfectly to replicate the world just as it was when Adam and Eve had that fateful conversation.

So how did people get access to this dream time? The dream time existed in multidimensions, at all times they were part of the dream and it wasn't like they had access to the dream and it wasn't like it was a hallucinogenic state or a state of altered consciousness. The dreaming is the definition of the unity of the now, the dreaming is everything that ever existed, everything that exists today and everything that will ever exist. And so you are encased by definition in the realm of the dreaming. This was not a civilization without a history, in a way, it was a civilization through their ideas system that had in fact defeated the very notion of history. ....

I am reminded of Master Dogen's very fluid, back and forth, all encompassed in this immediate moment, sense of time(s) and timeless. This is from my book, coming out soon in time (October), "The Zen Master's Dance" ...

This way of experiencing time goes beyond time and no time, where all of time is held in each moment. Actually, we might better speak of ways (plural) of experiencing times and timeless. Dōgen lived an interflowing time and being, knew time as being, your being-time which is a moment of the being-time of all the world.

Happy Non-Birthday! Birth and passing time are not all there is.

Happy Now Birthday, now and now and now! In each and every moment, you and all the world are reborn.

Happy All-Birthday! As future flows into the past and present, while past becomes the future and present, we become younger and older and just this present age at once. One might say that this present instant holds fully your infancy and dotage, not to mention every moment from Big Bang to the universe’s Big Finale.

And on and on . . .
...

This moment of time is my time for being, as is your moment of time for being. What is more, all our times interconnect with and interflow into each other, are long or short or beyond measure, depending on how we look at things. Time moves beyond me and you and other things too, and flows in all kinds of directions besides the conventional past to future. ...

... Every person, thing, and event is an expression of time and being in that moment and place of time. Each might be thought of as its own complete moment of time in that place and moment. We can learn to see each and all, unimpeded and unhindering of all the rest of the world, just as two seconds of flowing time stand each on their own, undisturbed, and do not interfere with the flowing of each other. This moment is thoroughly this moment, whole and complete, and this is so for the next moment, and the moment after that.

... No being, no thing, no grain of sand nor planet, no galaxy nor the whole universe is apart from this present moment of time. And all moments of time, whether the past or future, are just this present moment of time, for this present moment of time is just this present moment of time as it was or as it will be. However, in reality there is no single “moment of time,” for my time is not your time or anything else’s. Each exists in its own time.
Likewise, all things and beings of this earth are just this earth, and all moments of this earth, whether past or future, are just this present earth both then and as it will be. This is so for all things in the universe and all things of your life. All moments, past or future, fully hold and are all other moments. What is more, the time of all beings and things, grains of sand, and planets, this world or any other, or even whole universes, are just your time, and your being is theirs as well. Nonetheless, their time is just their time, and not yours at all.

Anyway, you will have to buy the book for more, no time to waste.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Doshin]

To me time has gone by fast. Too fast, I want this path to last longer.

All this brought back deep memories



Doshin
St twice