Hey World, Could You Slow It Down A Moment? : Time and Perception
Q: Aww, time... why do you never do what we want you to do?
A: Our brains hate us and they haven't adapted to modern society. Evolution is slow.
I've thought about this overall subject on many occasions. Yesterday specifically was a moment where I really just wanted a damn moment to process the day and imagine what life would be like if I was a professional wrestler.
This moment came while I sat awake in bed at 5AM. I was not all that tired, but knew I had to be up in a few hours, so I just stared at the stucco roof while holding off the urge to count all the mini-gypsum stalagmites by thinking about hitting a pause button to hold off time long enough to get tired and have a few more hours of sleep. Nothing like daydreaming while trying to get to a point of actual dreaming to stop you from falling asleep when all you want to do is sleep. Stupid brain...
Perception and our conceptual knowledge of reality is a strange thing. The way I see the world probably differs from the way you see the world, like literally see it. Figuratively too, probably. Want proof? Try to describe the color "red" to a blind person in a way that makes them see the color as you see it. Let me save you the trouble, you can't. That may also just be a limitation of language, unless you're German, then you probably have a word for the description of the color red and a word for the limitation in other languages to describe the color red.
Everything we see, feel, hear, and understand is based on how the electrical impulses in our brain interprets a multitude of stimuli. It really is an interesting topic and one filled with as many gaps and guess work as our memories. You ever play a game of telephone with a group of people to see how screwed up the original message gets by the time it reaches the last person? You ever wonder if the message got so fucked up because someone purposely changed it because it would be funny? Were you ever that person? Fucking stop being that person, your perception of funny is wrong and you're messing up science.
Neurosciences has done a lot of work and theorizing based on the idea that the entire world as we see it is nothing more than a simulation our brain is painting for us based on stimuli, and if the commonality of mental illnesses is anything to go by, we take our perception of reality way too fucking seriously to try and run everything based on a regimented schedule. No wonder Jack was made a dull boy.
I find it all a bit funny really, how serious the world is and how seriously we take time. We schedule everything, it is the only way modern society works, however there are times we stare at a clock and five minutes seems like 30 and other times we are doing something, like... I don't know, getting ready for work, but can't find our wallet, so we're searching around the house and find it in the pocket of the pants we wore yesterday that are on the floor behind the dresser that we likely tossed over there out of exhausted frustration and suddenly 30 minutes has passed and we're going to be late. We've all done that... all of us. We've all done that. Not just me, if it was just me, I would say 'I' instead of 'we.'
Time is silly and it would be awesome if our perception of it was a little more stable is all I'm saying, but it isn't and in the end, that's okay, right? We may lack full control over every part of our life, but that's part of what allows comedy to exist. Without flaws, without different perspectives, without the imperfections of humanity, we wouldn't have stories and shit would get real boring, real fast.
Still doesn't mean I wouldn't mind a little remote to slow the world down sometimes. For fucks sake society, we should all have a little breathing room sometimes. Like Sweden, Sweden is all about that breathing room and proving our standard business and life practices are complete bullshit.
