We have a short period to live in this life. We all know that we have no choice other than living our life in the way intended. But what is this intended living? This is something that we decide by our interactions. We interact within ourselves and we interact with others. We interact within ourselves with our choices on what we eat, how we look after ourselves, what we learn, etc. Also we interact with others by choices of friends, places we visit, and generally how we do things.
We have to make our way through life. This life is full of surprises, full of challenges, full of unfortunate events as well as full of beauties. How do we find our way around this life? We need to have trust in ourselves and yet do our research in life to do better. There is a contradiction in the sentence mentioned before and that is that how can we both trust ourselves in life and make our way through life. Our life is full of contradictions that we have to make sense of. This sense making is tailored towards our individuality and it is unique to us. We all do this sense making differently.
Sometimes it may feel that things are not happening. In these circumstances we need to trust in ourselves and know that things may not happening in the right order but each experience contributes to our understanding and our growth. Therefore we need to trust that things unfold in the way that they are intended and therefore make best of our situations. Another relation with time is living in the present. There are so many times throughout our lives that we may worry about future, or think about past. But to be genuinely in the present gives us new freedoms that we have not experienced before. It gives us clarity and we can be fully engaged in our life.
Also we need to reflect on our experiences in life and learn from them. This can be done through making sense of events and how they have shaped us. Another factor is to have intentions and goals in the future. This is to know where we are heading and how we can get to our goals. We cannot live well without support and help of others. therefore we should take support when needed. This will help us gain perspective on our own experiences. Another aspect of timing and how we can make sense of life is our attitude. By having gratitude towards life we shift our focus on what we have and how we can make most of our time in life. Therefore we need to embrace change and understand that change is part of our life and it is an opportunity for growth and transformation.
Perception of time maybe different between people. This perception significantly influences our choices, decisions and emotional wellbeing. We all feel time passing in our life. As our body ages and we learn to feel the time passing. We get to understand passing of time and its importance. We start to make sense of our life and how time plays an important role in this sense making. For example throughout our life we sense time and as we age the future feels shorter and the past feels farther away. Therefore we need to make time and engage in the present, and nurture our relationships. Time is not just about our life ending, it is also more importantly how we make time to do something we love, to have time for loved ones and do something meaningful in our life. Time is a canvas of what we do throughout our life.
There is also possibility of influences in our ability to to perceive and make sense of time. Generally negative emotions will make the time go slower and positive emotions make the time go faster. Also stimulus such as drug and alcohol can result in time distortion – This is because our body and mind interact with each other and therefore using stimulus in our body effect our mind, and our mind is distorted as a result of this. Strong emotions such as fear or anger can also distort time experience – This is because when we experience strong emotions our body impacts our mind and therefore we get over stimulated in our brain and therefore our mind perceives outside information differently, which results in distortion in time experience.
We have built in ability to perceive time. What is different between us and animals is that we tackle time heads on, we create and rely on the time concept. Have you heard the phrase make the time? This is human ability to influence time and make it into steps and allocate various activities to time. This is how we make sense of time, by being actively engage with time. In whatever we do time plays an important role. If we want to do well at work we need to take our time, if we want to do well in exams we need to take our time. So being patient with time and appreciating its importance is very important in our life.
In general more we explore life and experience things in life, we will have a more fulfilled life and we use our time in this planet in the right way. Our perception of time is not about sense perception and physical aspects of matters placed in time – It is about us existing in time because we can perceive it in many different ways. Sometimes we perceive it faster that it is, sometimes slower than it is. But never the less we do perceive time and it has quality and quantity in our life, therefore it is possible to make sense of it. This is an ongoing process, therefore resilience and strength to navigate through changes in life is important, and this is possible only as long as we accept time and living through time as part of our life.