Time waits for no one! This week I’ve learned that time isn’t always what it seems and when you least expect it, its gone!
The subject of time has been the centre of previous blogs I have written
and I never get tired of writing about it. If the truth be known, I think time
is something non of us really understand and therefore do not appreciate fully.
If you are fan of the “Back to the Future” movies or indeed any kind of time
travelling stories, you would know that the theory of time travel is based on
the premises that you fold time to get to the future faster (or to the past
depending on which way you are going!) But how do you fold time when you cannot
touch it? I guess I’ll leave that to the scientist trying to discover time
travel!
But one thing is for sure; we don’t have enough of it and really
understand how it works. Let me give you a couple of examples.
In the past I have talked about having time for everything and that your
time is the same as mine, yet one of us can have a more productive use of this
commodity. This week I have also come to realise something about time, which I
guess I knew about it but it hit me finally in the face. We don’t really know
how fast or slow time goes. What does this mean? Well even though we measure time
with a clock, I am not sure, just like I’m not sure how you would fold time to
get there faster, that time always goes at the same pace.
Of course a clock would accurately tell you what has gone by, how many
seconds passed since you last looked at the time, but I am not sure it really
shows you how you have “travelled” across this time. This is where this “time
travel” theory starts to make sense. I actually think time isn’t always the
same and some times it goes faster and some times it goes slower; think about
it.
This happens all the time is our lives, but it became more evident to me
this week as I travelled to Armenia, which is four hours ahead of the UK. I had
a very busy and tight schedule and I was away for four days visiting two cities
and I spent two days travelling there and back due to time zones. Part of the
trip on Tuesday was to stop over in Vienna where I had a ten-hour layover! Now,
ten hours in an airport sound ten too many hours and most people would agree that
this would be a killer! I had been offered to go down to the city and spend
time there rather than at the airport, but I chose to stay, I had enough work
to keep me entertained for the duration of my visit to Vienna Airport! I don’t
know what it is, if it is because you keep yourself busy, or perhaps because
you don’t think about it, but soon after arriving and settling in the lounge to
do some work, I looked at my watch and it was already time to board the plane!
Time just flew so fast and I didn’t get to accomplish everything I was hoping
for in that ten-hour layover.
So here we see what the perception of time is. When you say ten hours,
it sounds an awful lot of hours, but when you think about it, on average that’s
how much people spend in the office every day. But when you ask someone who
works in an office if ten hours go by fast, they may say no (depending on how
much they enjoy what they do)
When I finally got to my destination, it was 5.30 in the morning and my
meetings where starting at 9 am. I tried to get some sleep on the plane but
I’ve never been very good at it. I’m not one of those people that as soon as
the plane takes off they are gone. On the airplane I experience the opposite
with time. The flight from Vienna to Yerevan was only four hours, which when
you take 40 minutes for take off and landing, it leaves you with just over 3
hours of actual flight. Take another 30 for your mean and it’s really not a lot
left to get proper sleep. After finishing eating, I closed my eyes trying to snooze.
I only had two and a half hours, but talk about time going slow! After what
seemed like five hours of trying to sleep without success I opened my eyes only
to discover I’d only been tossing and turning for 60 minutes and I had an hour
and a half left! What! I tell you the next 90 minutes seemed like a lifetime
and I couldn’t wait to land as the seconds just dragged and dragged and dragged…
When I finally got to my destination I wanted to get to bed as soon as
possible to try and get as much sleep as I could before my meeting. I arrive at
my room at 5.35 am and I calculated that if I moved fast I could be in bed by
about 5.45, I only needed to do a couple of things and jump into bed. And again
the “fast-forward time” ghost got hold of my time and the next thing I know
it’s 6.15 am and I’m just getting into bed! Where did the time go? I should
stop folding my time when I shouldn’t!
I had two days of very successful meetings and I guess being so busy
kept me going with very little sleep. By the way time passed so fast for the
two days I think I was folding it too much!
I love the phrase “time waits for no one” because it tells you how
little control we have over time. You cannot stop it and this week I’ve come to
realise you cannot control how fast or slow it goes either. What may seem like
a lifetime, it may be nothing to others. Waiting for someone or something may
seem an eternity and when they arrive or you get there, then it’s over too
soon, and time just passed you by, not waiting for you or anyone else!
But one thing is for sure and I still believe it’s true; don’t waist
your time! It doesn’t matter how fast or slow it goes, always put it to good
use because once it’s gone, you will never get it back!
