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Welcome to Insights and Implications!
We received this newsletter contribution from Ken Manning’s son Zander. Thanks Zander. Wishing you the best in your final year of school and all the years after.
All the best,
All of us at Insight Principles
Time: The Greatest Illusion We Face
On June 9th, 2014 I walked onto the UMass campus for the first time as a freshman and, on the same day, I got my first piece of advice: “enjoy your time here, before you know it you’ll be graduating. Time flies.”
I got the same advice when I began high school and I remember thinking then that the time there would drag on. I was quite wrong.
My four years flew by and I went from a freshman in high school to a senior who was sending a deposit to his dream college in what seemed like the blink of an eye.
Today as I type this, having just finished my third year of college and looking ahead to my final year, I’m thinking: “where did the time go?”
In June, I was sitting around with family and friends reflecting on the days coming up. I said I wanted to enjoy my summer and the last year of college with the intention of not getting caught up in how fast time was going by.
Then I had an insight about thought and time. I realized that it appears that time is flying by and that I have no control over it. I realized, however, the reality is that I have some control over how I experience time.
If I want to slow things down it has nothing to do with how busy I am, how much I accomplish in one day/year, nor does it matter what other people tell me about how time acts. The way time works is completely self-oriented: it is my experience, no one else’s. If I slow my thinking down and live in the moment, everything will move much, much slower.
Because of this insight, I’m having the most enjoyable and “timeless” summer. I never feel rushed or pressured to cram a bunch of activities into each day. I’m looking forward to a timeless final year in college.
-Zander Manning
Zander had a great insight. On the one hand, time looks like an absolute reality. After all, there are 24 hours in every day. Every minute ticks off predictably. Zander’s insight was not about the clock, but about his experience of time. He realized that his experience of time is created in his mind via his thinking. This explains why sixty minutes at a concert or ballgame, can feel like a hundred and sixty minutes in the lecture hall.
And once Zander realized where his experience of time originated, he knew where to look to have a different experience. Time can’t pressure us, nor can time make us enjoy it. Only our thinking can do that.
-Sandy Krot
©Insight Principles, Inc.