Time Distortion Therapy

“Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.” – Alan Watts

Life goes by way too fast…

…Most of the time.

But I’m two weeks into a solo retreat right now, and time is stuck at a stand-still.

Two weeks ago feels like two months ago, and I’m staring down the barrel of seven more weeks of silence, which might as well be a year.

Time distortion. It’s a bxtch.

Speed it up, and life becomes a blurry haze of day to day tasks, one after the other, not a single rose smelt.

Slow it down, and, well, you find yourself sitting here writing this email whining that the clock won’t move.

There’s gotta be a sweet spot around here somewhere…

…But it’s damn hard to find, and I’m convinced the reason why is none other than:

Technology.

Yes, technology.

Screens, content, notifications, posts, podcasts, reels, likes, hearts, thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs stuck sideways from swiping that damn infinite-scroll that sucks the brain right out of your head and the time right out of your life.

Which is exactly what I’ve eliminated or minimized over the past two weeks, hence, the time distortion.

It’s a bit scary, when you think about it:

If you’ve ever been laying in bed looking at your phone, only to snap out of the spell and realize it’s 1 AM and you’ve totally botched your bedtime…

If you’ve ever binge-watched a show, only to pry your bleeding eyes away from the screen and look at the clock in shock…

If you’ve ever disappeared down a YouTube rabbit hole and watched time disappear along with you…

…And afterward, had that eery, sobering, way-too-familiar thought:

“Holy sh*t, that was a huge waste of time…”

…Well, here’s another one for you:

We do that to ourselves, in small hits or big doses, continuously, all day long.

Every time our attention dances from one shiny notification to the next, time blurs and accelerates and then is gone.

Sometimes we get something in return for it:

A new insight, a wave of inspiration, or even just some genuine, high quality entertainment.

But more often, if we’re honest about it, we get nothing.

We spend the two most valuable resources we have — our time and attention — on empty calories that leave us worse for having consumed them.

It’s a raw deal.

I once heard Buddhist teacher Reggie Ray say:

“Modern technology is one of the most dangerous threats to our spiritual development that we face today.”

And every time I reduce or eliminate it, I remember why.

I don’t think the solution is to throw away our phones and stare at the wall all day.

But it also isn’t what we’ve been doing, which is playing our lives on fast forward while barely paying attention to the scenes because we’re too busy looking at our phone.

Let’s stop speedrunning and play this game right.

We only get to play it once, after all.

– T