On the perception of time...

We are constantly reminded of what an accelerated culture we live in, of how fast our lives are. Days, weeks and months seem to breeze past without a trace leaving many of us with a feeling of anxiety that somehow we are missing out. Constantly bombarded by media images we are told we should be off somewhere exploring the world or our inner selves, we should be meditating with saddhus in India or riding rapids in North America or following the Inca trail, soaking up experience for experience sake. But surely we need a context to our travails, without this we are just chasing our own tails. With this in mind, I had the last week off work (just need to use up some leave time). I had nothing planned, no schedule, nothing to run around for, and for a short time actually slowed down. There was no feeling of constant motion, of acceleration, mainly just peace and quiet, it was only the five days but it felt like two weeks. I guess what I'm trying to say is that from time to time we should all (where possible) take time to do nothing, there that's it.