Live long and prosper

Everyone has experienced differing movements in time. When you indulge in a deeply interesting, stimulating or engaging activity, time seems to fly. Whenever you are watching a particularly interesting sport or movie, or doomscrolling video reels, you don't feel the speedy passage of time, and you suddenly realise that a lot of time has passed away.

On the other hand, imagine being on a long train journey, with no phone or book or music to keep your mind engaged, and you would find yourself looking at the watch frequently, only to experience that time has become excruciatingly slow.

In our individual experience, time contracts if our sense organs or intellect are being stimulated. Conversely, the absence of sense pleasures or deep thinking seems to expand our experience of time.


In meditation, the objective is to witness each passing moment, without permitting the mind to indulge in the past or the future. New or infrequent practitioners of meditation find this process difficult, as the mind wanders and gets sucked into a series of thoughts. But, over time, the meditating person finds it easier to be an observer of each passing minute, second and, eventually, micro-second. With this ability to meditatively become a witness to the slow passage of fractional units of time, the meditator also gets a slow, lingering experience of time, which makes the same absolute unit of time feel a lot longer. Meditation, devoid of thoughts and sense pleasures, provides the collateral benefit of an experience in longevity.