Korean Job Discussion Forums

[khyber]

Instead of other people's big words....here are my theories:

to speed up your life
1) routines...good gord, they're like hyperdrive those things
2) work....seems impossible to live slowly while you work
3) staying busy

to slow down
1) more vacations
2) more\...uhm....."stuff"
3) more boredom.

[nev]

There's a character in "Catch 22" who is acutely aware of how fast time passes and becomes paranoid about this, and the fact his life his ebbing away quicker and quicker. Therefore, to slow down time and thus increase his life span, he begins doing some mindless task he despises. Because he finds it so monotonous, it seems to take an age, and thus he perceives himself as living for longer.

So, the solution to time passing by too fast: spend a lot of time doing something you find incredibly dull.

[SuperHero]

My theory is that time is eaten up by some sort of cosmic washing machine in the same way that the washer always eats only one sock.

I never have enough time to do anything.

[Freezer Burn]

Unemployment will slow time down, sit on your arse and do nothing, whats that old saying "A watched clock never moves"

[desultude]

Van Islander- good analysis and synthesis of the perspectives.

I think time might move proportionate to the chaos in our brains- the older we are, the more chaos of expectations, insecurities, worries, memories and anticipations.

Rumor has it that when one gets good at meditation, time stands still. This is done by stilling all of the above concerns and being present in the moment, which is, of course, eternal. Being a humble novice, myself, I can only guess on the matter.

[Rteacher]

I'm in my mid-fifties, and I can attest to the fact that time continues to go by faster as we grow older. My parents tell me that they're amazed how fast the years fly by. Christmases, birthdays and changes of season apparently race by in old age.

Consciousness is the key. Is our consciousness part of our material body or is it a symptom of our non-material soul?

It's true that the body begins the dying process immediately after it takes its birth. Every material body goes through the following phases: it takes birth, grows, stays around for awhile, produces some by-products, dwindles, then vanishes...

The event-to-event theory suggested by another poster and analytically developed further by "Van Islander" has merit - but in order to get a more complete picture, one needs to realize that inevitable final big event of death only applies to the material body - not to the eternally conscious soul.

Because the constitutional position of the individual soul is to live forever (in association with other eternal personalities headed by the Supreme Person) it is embarrassing for it to be embodied in a temperary material form. The all-pervasive localized feature of God as supersoul (paramatma) accompanying each soul through all its births and deaths in the evolutionary cycle is all-cognizant, patiently awaiting the individual soul to abandon its vain attempts at material happiness in vaious lifeforms.

Although the soul is never contaminated by matter, our consciousness becomes polluted by material attachments we've accumulated over many lifetimes and our misidentification with material body, mind and intelligence. Determined to enjoy our senses, we tend to ignore the suffering and death we see all around us and foolishly think it won't happen to us. The supersoul continually offers guidance from within and bona-fide spiritual masters and scriptures (like Bhagavad-gita ) are extant to illuminate the spiritual path back home, but materially absorbed persons choose to be "not interested".

To the degree that we are neglecting our progressive spiritual development we are wasting our precious time. As we get older and experience time slipping away at an increasingly fast rate it should be heeded as a warning sign that the rare opportunity for spiritual realization afforded by our present human form of life will soon expire.

In the final analysis, it really doesn't matter why time seems to be going by faster as we grow older. We should be very concerned that we have not devoted enough energy to our spiritual development so we can transcend birth, death and material suffering.

[fiveeagles]

When I arrived in Korea a few months ago, I was thinking. It only took me 9 hours to get here, but Vancvouer is 16 hours behind. Am I 7 hours younger than my counter parts?

What if I took a flight that got me to Korea in a hour? What will happen to time in the future as we develop technologies that will allow to fly at faster rates?



Just some thoughts. ha.

[jayjayjay]

What strikes me initially is that most everyone acknowledges this phenomenon. But in life it is rarely analyzed, only trivialized through expressions such as ��where did the time go?�� ��time flies,�� etc. After all, there are only 365 days in a year.

But, if this age/accelerated perception of time passing ratio is real, and it does indeed seem to be a psychological enigma, then perhaps it deserves more thought.

I��m working on articulating my new theory that was hatched partly as a result of reading these responses.

Thank you for all your ideas—very well done.

[newinseoul]

I agree with a lot of what some of the other posters said. I just wanted to add a few things.

There really is no such thing as time. The past is gone and tomorrow hasn't happened. The only time we have is now. The present time.

When we are children we are living in the moment and we don't think about time. As we develop our higher functioning part of the brain (usually in middle high school), we start thinking about time and how it flies by. When we get older we usually realize time is flying because we are so busy with life, and our daily routines and time constraints. What would happen if there was no such thing as "Time?" Would our world become chaotic or would our time become much more relaxed and lived at our own pace?

Time is our own construct. As Rteacher and others mentioned, when a person meditates time does not exist because we are so focused on the present moment.

"Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking, into the future" ~Steve Miller Band

[Rteacher]

Better to credit "desultude" for the reference to timeless meditation ... Absolute time in the spiritual world is certainly different from time in the material world - where it serves mainly a destructive function. Impersonal transcendentalists think that realizing the sat or "eternality" aspect of our existence is the highest realization of Absolute Truth, but personalists consider loving devotional service (bhakti) in variegated relationships (rasas) to the Supreme Person to be the ultimate source of transcendental pleasure.

Your stress on living only in the moment is reminiscent of the "BE HERE NOW" book - which every good hippy knows was put together by Timothy Leary's former associate, Richard Alpert, aka "Baba Ram Das" I vaguely remember being impressed by its far out graphics and cryptic messages - but I was basically stoned out of my mind... I was extremely fortunate to soon thereafter discover transcendental literature authored by a real guru - with deep compassion for fallen, wretched souls like myself.

[nev]

[Rteacher]

[nev]

[Rteacher]

No problemo... .... .....

[some waygug-in]

What if time suddenly started going backwards...........would we even know?

I mean, how could we.......maybe it is already and in real universal time
everyone starts out as a dead pile of bones, springs to life as an old fart, gets younger and better looking all the time. Then starts to shrink, crawls inside his mama and eventually back into the gleam in daddy's eye.