Is slowing time down a good idea?

*

You begin to notice auto doppelgangers whenever you buy a new car.

“I didn’t realize there were so many silver Subaru Foresters,” I thought six years ago.

It’s funny what controls our attention.

And alters our perspective.

*

Tuesday, November 5, 2024, will be my 19th American presidential election.

This quadrennial event is on my radar because I taught politics to college students for 40 years.

Soccer has the right idea for aging fans like me. Its National Team Championships are held in four-year cycles, each lasting a month.

The 2024 European Football Championship started on June 14. Today, I will fit my life around three beautiful games.

What about even rarer events, like the 17-year cicada brood and the 20-year total solar eclipse?

I may be 94 at the next concealment of the sun.

How many of each do I have left?

*

The refrigerator you see in the photo is two years old.

Already, the deluxe ice maker is misbehaving.

With more features and technology that can break down, today’s icebox lasts a little over a decade, half the lifetime of my mother’s trusty, simpler machine.

Will I outlast even a machine that was built to break down?

Yesterday, for a Father’s Day gift, my son took me to a screening of 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The two-hour film passed in the blink of an eye.

As has Ben’s 34 years.

And the 43 years from when I first sat in wonder at that boulder rushing toward the audience.

It’s already June 17th here in middle America. The summer has not officially started, and it seems half gone.

How do we slow time down?

*

Or is that even a good idea?

Occasionally, I lose track of time when I write.

The late psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called it being in the “flow.”

I am so immersed in what I’m doing that time flies.

It’s like watching Raiders for the second time yesterday.

Or spending time with my son.

And it’s just happened again.

Time refused to slow down, even when I wrote about wishing that time would slow down.

Is there a lesson?

*

One of my mentors, Mark Lund, gave me advice about 25 years ago that I’ve never forgotten but must continually relearn.

Mark directed my college’s Study Abroad program. I had just returned from my first trip with students to Northern Ireland, proud that I had not spent all the money budgeted for our three-week travel course.

He looked at me and said:

Students pay us for the experience. Your task is to spend ALL their money wisely by giving them the best experience possible.

The money was meant to be spent. All of it!

Why would time be any different?