How do you measure?

One of the really messed up things about the way time works is the feeling part of time.  Maybe you've noticed it too, the way when you're looking forward to something time seems to drag.  Ever notice at the beginning of vacation, especially if you're driving to your destination, it seems to take forever to get there.  You load into the vehicle and you feel like the trip will never really end.  Or when you were a kid and you were going to be with Family at Xmas or Easter or whatever and an hour long car ride seemed to take forever like it would just never end.  Conversely when you get to your vacation destination or when you got to your grandparents or other family members house somehow time clicked back into place, only to begin the process of speeding up.  What looked like a long break stretching out ahead of you turns into the briefest of moments, blinking your eyes seems to make the whole process move so fast and you're already at the end of what it took so long to get too and you know that can't be right but here you are packing your bags into the car, or pulling down the tents or getting in the car and returning home and in every instance what seemed to take forever to get to is over way faster than it should be.

The thing that is amazing in all of these feelings of time going slow and fast there is this one constant and that constant is the fact that the time all is moving the same as it always has.  The hour going to a place isn't any longer than the hour returning from the place, and yet it doesn't feel that way.  I remember the first time I realized if I went to sleep in the car when I woke up I was home and it didn't feel like any time had passed.  Went to sleep in one place, woke up in a different place and there was no time in between, except we all know that isn't true, time kept moving at the same pace it always has or did it?

I've always said perception is reality for people.  That is true in so many ways.  Even if things can be shown or proven to be a certain way a persons perception of that thing that I can prove may be totally different and therefore even though we can prove reality it doesn't matter perception for the individual is what matters, it's what shapes their understanding of something, it molds their ideasd thoughts and feelings about a situation or a person or an activity, it influences the decision making process, many times more than actual reality ever will.  

So while time is in reality a constant, in perception it does all sorts of things.  It crawls, it speeds by, it stops, it shifts there are all sorts of ways we describe it and even though reality says it's not doing any of those things the truth is it's doing all of those things because the way we perceive it, dictates the way we interact with it and the choices we make because of it. 

I've been measuring time between the tears lately.  I know this may be getting old to some people I mean it has to be right.  No one would ever say it but that doesn't make it any less true.  I know that people are heart broken with us.  I know that they wish they could help, I know they would love to be able to just make it better, that goes without saying, but.  That's the thing that's so hard because even though people love and feel and are sad they are also not measuring time between the tears.  They feel it all, they cry when the see any of us and when the put their arms around us if they can.  They reach out and you can see and hear the sadness, the tension the bewilderment in that moment but their reality has all the other things that they deal with and so they love on us and feel with us and for us and then they slip back into their own life, their own time stream where things are not like they are in this one.  Time moves on for them in that way that time does and they move throughout their day doing all the things that have to do and get to do and that's how it should be and that's what they need to do and that's what I want them to do.  No one should have to be here it's messed up and it's unexplainable and I appreciate it when people take time to wade into our time stream and try and spend some of it with us but I have to say that I envy them when they move back into their own time stream.  

There's this song in RENT called Seasons of Love.  The lyric says how do you measure a year in the life and then it goes on to say it's all about love.  You measure life in the love that you have the love that you share the love that you feel the love that you give.  It's true on so many levels and when I apply that measure to the 4730400 minutes that we got to have it gives the alternating feelings of warmth and light and then gets slammed with anger and confusion and all of it and time slows to a crawl and I watch the clock click over from moment to moment and then well then I find myself falling into this thing that can be approximated as sleep, and I wake up and when I do time slams into place again and the day stretches out and it's full of stuff to do but there's just this big jagged hole and so I do the stuff and then find myself on the edge of the hole trying to figure out a way to get that hole to not have to exist at all and no matter how hard I try and how much I want it to it's just there and always will be.