Time seems to be on my mind this week. Must be the switch to DST. Daylight savings time. Although the amount of daylight isn't really impacted one way or the other by our running around and moving all of our clocks ahead. I'm not sure what we're really saving but it's not daylight. Not energy either, the numbers-crunchers tell us.
I found out today that people often misestimate time by 15% to 25% in either direction, depending on the person and their sense of time. Their time perception. Not only are the ends of the time spectrum vague, but scientists tell us that our sense of that stretch of time we call "now" varies, as well. For most people, researchers have come to define the "now" to be about 2 and 1/2 seconds long. It's a person's typical span of unconscious attention. Not very long is it?
For those among us whose "now" interval is much shorter than 2 1/2 seconds, we are among the readily-distracted and don't stay "on task" long enough to make full sense of our surroundings and respond accordingly. If "now" is much longer than 2 and 1/2 clock ticks, then a person's power of attention may be too rigid to shift when necessary to keep up with changes.
My Uncle Gene always used to mark the passage of society back to standard time in the Fall by saying we're back on "God's time." I wonder what God's sense of the "now" is?
Now . . . where was I?
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About Me
- Mark Gorman
- I was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, along the banks of the Susquehanna River, in the valley made up by Bald Eagle Mountain to the south, and gentle hills and valleys to the north. That place that sheltered me, gave me food and friends, and both physical and spiritual nourishment for 18 years. That is the space where I was physically and emotionally formed. Ever since growing up there . . . because of growing up there . . . I have been inexorably linked to nature . . . to the earth and to all life.