Essay On Passage Of Time

No one is born with an innate understanding of time, and babies must learn to synchronize and coordinate their behavior with the rest of the world. Until then, they demand attention at all hours of the day and night, completely upending their parents ' schedules. And for all of us, travel can be disorienting and disruptive, especially if we visit a place where time is organized quite differently from what we 're used to (like in Spain, with its afternoon siesta).

But we 're all able to eventually adjust – babies included – by adapting to a system of standard temporal units: minutes, hours and days of the week.

Despite the effectiveness of this system, there 's still a big difference in how we perceive the passage of time – how fast or slow time seems to go by. A few minutes may seem to

Soldiers, for example, often describe time slowing down during combat.

Waiting and boredom may be the most familiar. Solitary confinement in prison is an extreme version of this, but working the counter at a job and having no customers will also do the trick.

People report that being in an altered state of consciousness – such as drug-induced experiences with LSD, mescaline or peyote – will also make time seem to slow down.

Next, high levels of concentration and meditation can influence the subjective passage of time. Various athletes, for example, perceive time to pass slowly when they are "in the zone." Yet people who are adept at meditation can produce comparable effects.

Finally, there 's shock and novelty. For example, the perceived passage of time can slow down when we 're doing something new, such as learning a challenging skill or going on vacation to an exotic locale.

Paradoxically, then, time is perceived to pass slowly in situations where there is almost nothing happening or a great deal is happening. In other words, the complexity of the situation is either much higher or much lower than normal.

Some experiences more ‘dense