How To Control Time!

Time often spontaneously speeds up or slows down depending on what we’re doing and where we are…

Do What?

Last week, I fell over. I’m too old to fall over! But as I was jogging down the street on my morning run, I tripped on a raised section of pavement, fell to my knees and scraped both of them. It was so embarrassing, and painful!

It also happened r-e-a-l-l-y slowly. I was running with my husband and, in the time it took to fall, all of the following happened: I recognised I was tripping, called out to him hoping he’d catch me, stumbled trying to break my fall, realised that nothing was going to stop it, then actually continued to fall. Afterwards I was amazed at the time difference, because while checking me over Hubbie said, “What happened? One second you were there, the next you were just… gone!” For him, the moment was sudden and abrupt.

Our experience of time can’t always be measured by the minutes and seconds on digital clocks.

For example, did you ever lift your head from a book to check the time, only to find it was later than you thought? (Books are the best!)

Conversely, did you ever start an undesirable task and find yourself watching the clock, feeling it was taking ages to complete?

Where How?

Feelings aside, however, time really does move slower or faster for some of us. Astronauts orbiting the planet experience ‘time dilation’. Time for them actually speeds up the faster their spaceship’s acceleration is through space, their ‘relative velocity time dilation’. Time also slows down the closer they are to a gravitational force, such as Earth, their ‘gravitational time dilation’.

The International Space Station experiences both of these phenomena. Its distance from Earth means time ticks faster; but in travelling at nearly eight kilometres per second its speed means time ticks slower. The end result means time goes slower for ISS astronauts than for the rest of us, lagging approximately 0.01 seconds for every 12 earth months passed.

Control Time!

Down on the ground, we can control the slowing down or speeding up of time… as storytellers!

One of the joys of telling and receiving stories is in sharing another’s experiences, walking in another’s authentic shoes. To accurately represent this to readers or listeners, storytellers can pace out characters’ experiences with various techniques, such as the use of detail.

For example, if I want to speed time up in a story I’m writing or telling, I gloss over details and summarise events. If I want to slow time down, I’m meticulous with the details and show events unfolding breath by breath. When writing stories, this means that moments of high tension and drama often involve a higher word count, even though those moments happen relatively quickly compared to other events in the story. It’s all in the detail!

Detail can also affect memory – the stories we tell ourselves about the past. The level of detail we recall from stressful or eventful memories is often plentiful. When we remove the detail from life, such as when relaxing, our recollection of that time has it passing all too quickly. Sometimes we can look back on a year and wonder where all the time went. Other years can feel like a drag.

What do you think about this year! After it’s over, will it seem to have passed quickly or slowly? How much detail will you recollect of it when adding to your stories of the past?

Time is of course relative to experience, so probably only time will tell!