Awareness of Time

So does it scare anyone else to think that when you're dead thats.... I know we cant do anything about, but thats the scary part!

I often wonder how im gonna die too
 
philtorrens said:
This is a touching subject for me as I was only talking about this the other day to my mates. It's almost as though time speeds up as we get older (Im 30). I often look at the '21 years old' tankard in my kitchen and think 'where did the years go?'. I think our perception of time changes as we get older and speeds up. Your still in your twenties so enjoy yourself and make the best of it ;)
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Well I'm over 40 and ricocheting into oblivion as I type.
It does hit you now and then though... best to make the most when you can. I really don't want too many regrets when I'm a proper old timer although some are are already looking inevitable.
Not too many regrets is all I ask for on my deathbed.

Now you young whatnots - run along and play nice!
 
Im 19, So far got nowere, going round in circles, living life to the full when i can, and when i aint doing its boring as hell and theres nothing i can do to move forward but wait for what the future can bring, but nothings happened so far so whats to say it will?

Few strong relationships gone bad in the past which i regret (silly cheating little toe rags) and im now with the one i wish id got with way befor i even met any of my ex's, but cant dwell on the past just gotta put more effort into the present right now to make sure the future holds great things.
 
OP, I'm very similar to you.

I'm 16, and I feel like I have one foot in the grave :o

I find that one of the problems is that I'm very 'lazy'. By that I mean that I will think to myself, "oh, I have to go and do this". But instead of going and doing it, I will procrastinate for a few minutes, sometimes a few hours! It has led me to feel like I'm not achieving as much as I should, and is therefore amplifying the feeling of time passing me by.

Even in the process of writing this post, I got distracted for 5 mins looking at another website :(
 
IceShock said:
Im 19, So far got nowere, going round in circles, living life to the full when i can, and when i aint doing its boring as hell and theres nothing i can do to move forward but wait for what the future can bring, but nothings happened so far so whats to say it will?

Few strong relationships gone bad in the past which i regret (silly cheating little toe rags) and im now with the one i wish id got with way befor i even met any of my ex's, but cant dwell on the past just gotta put more effort into the present right now to make sure the future holds great things.
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Can I make a suggestion? I felt like you at your age.
Forget the bad relationships and concentrate on yourself.
Get an education or a skill or whatever you want to call it - you will never regret it I promise.
You will only ever have bad relationships if you're not happy with yourself and not making efforts to progress in life.
 
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Castiel said:
It is merely the perception of time...
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This ^ I am 29 now, almost 30. Feels scary just saying that. :eek: I feel like I'm still 18. Thankfully I look young so can pass myself off as 24-25 easy. :p

I was always interested in what my religion said about 'time' so I read up quite a bit on the subject and found it really interesting.

In Islam, there is a story in the Quran about a group of youth who lived some time in the past, who fled their home and left everything behind and went to live in a cave because they were being persecuted due to their faith. They slept in the cave for what they thought was a day or part of a day but infact, 300 years (in our time) passed by. Yet their bodies had not aged and their perception was that a number of hours at most had passed.

It indicates from an islamic point of view, that there are different dimensions of time that are inter-linked. We exist in one dimension of time, and when we die it is very clear from the Quran that we will enter a completely different dimension of time because the Quran says that when man is asked how long he lived on Earth, he will reply 'a day or part of a day'.

Also when the Quran speaks of God creating the Heavens and the Earth in 6 days, this obviously cannot refer to our 24 hour days since the sun itself had not been created then, therefore, it is referring to a different measurement of time. Another point is that Islam speaks of the existance of different beings which are present on Earth, angels and jinns. Yet we cannot see them as they exist in a different dimension of time to us, their days are not like our 24 hr days.

Time is indeed something extremely valuable in Islam, we are repeatedly warned that we will never be able to get back any time that has passed so as not to waste it. Interestingly, when the prophet PBUH spoke of Dajjal (the Anti Christ/False Messiah) he said 'his first day will be like a year, his second day will be like a month, his third day will be like a week, and the rest of his days will be as your days'. This indicates to me at least, that Dajjal will have 3 stages on Earth (1 day like a yr, month and week) where although he will be present and active, we will not see him as a man, but when his days 'are like our days' ie. 24 hour days, we will see him as a man.

Sorry for the long post but thought it may interest a few people.
 
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I'll be 35 this year, and looking back on the last 3 years, I have to question the point of it all... I'm single and have a career that has effectively come to a standstill, mostly because of economic factors beyond my control.
When I think of all of my time wasted by other people, at work and at home, and all of the other useless institutions and their various representatives that impinge upon my general well-being, as though they had some fundamental right to do so... :mad:

Not so long back I knew exactly where I was going and how I was going to get there.
Now there's no plan other than that which meets day to day needs. I find that when your life changes so spectacularly that you have difficulty adjusting to it, you experience a strange distortion of time: for weeks and weeks nothing of note happens, then all of a sudden you think WTF?! as the realisation that almost another year of your time here has vanished, then time seems to get faster and faster until you sink back into the now/present/moment, leaving ideas such as past/future free to amass fresh ammunition to scourge your awareness the next time you are least expecting it.

More so in the last 12 months I have grappled with understanding why it is seen as acceptable and proper for people to spend their lives in pointless and fruitless endeavour of careers and families and all of the other social imperatives deemed a requirement for life. Trouble is, all of these things take up so much of your life that when they are gone you are left wondering where all the time in the world (for you) has gone, when you hold up to the light the pitiful results of your labour for inspection.
There's a certain dejected bitterness for time lost and a fear of the ever accelerating time to come - when you line these up with your accomplishments to date and your hopes for the future... well, I feel the pull of the undertow and consider the merit of continuing to swim against the current or the choice of letting it take me where it will. I cannot say that I find either option entirely satisfactory.

On a slightly darker note - I'm not afraid of not being here anymore, but I think the process of that change from being, to not being, involving pain and suffering is not an enviable one. However once you're dead, there's FA you or anyone else can do about it, so what the hell? Which circular thinking brings me neatly back to how much I detest other people and organisations monopolising my precious existence with lots of stuff they think is important and mostly for their benefit, not mine. How I hate them all :p

Perhaps time and your perception of its passing is only relevant when you feel your life is lacking that key something that works on a deeper emotional level of fulfilment, therefore, you only really begin to notice its passage when you are not otherwise engaged with meaningful experience elsewhere.
 
I am a young paddawan, but this year has gone past quickly.
It's weird that the times you hated, go the slowest and the times you enjoy go quickest.
But it seems as if you bookmark things, and until you bookmark something else you feel the same and be the same.
 
jumpy said:
I'll be 35 this year, and looking back on the last 3 years, I have to question the point of it all... I'm single and have a career that has effectively come to a standstill, mostly because of economic factors beyond my control.
When I think of all of my time wasted by other people, at work and at home, and all of the other useless institutions and their various representatives that impinge upon my general well-being, as though they had some fundamental right to do so... :mad:

Not so long back I knew exactly where I was going and how I was going to get there.
Now there's no plan other than that which meets day to day needs. I find that when your life changes so spectacularly that you have difficulty adjusting to it, you experience a strange distortion of time: for weeks and weeks nothing of note happens, then all of a sudden you think WTF?! as the realisation that almost another year of your time here has vanished, then time seems to get faster and faster until you sink back into the now/present/moment, leaving ideas such as past/future free to amass fresh ammunition to scourge your awareness the next time you are least expecting it.

More so in the last 12 months I have grappled with understanding why it is seen as acceptable and proper for people to spend their lives in pointless and fruitless endeavour of careers and families and all of the other social imperatives deemed a requirement for life. Trouble is, all of these things take up so much of your life that when they are gone you are left wondering where all the time in the world (for you) has gone, when you hold up to the light the pitiful results of your labour for inspection.
There's a certain dejected bitterness for time lost and a fear of the ever accelerating time to come - when you line these up with your accomplishments to date and your hopes for the future... well, I feel the pull of the undertow and consider the merit of continuing to swim against the current or the choice of letting it take me where it will. I cannot say that I find either option entirely satisfactory.

On a slightly darker note - I'm not afraid of not being here anymore, but I think the process of that change from being, to not being, involving pain and suffering is not an enviable one. However once you're dead, there's FA you or anyone else can do about it, so what the hell? Which circular thinking brings me neatly back to how much I detest other people and organisations monopolising my precious existence with lots of stuff they think is important and mostly for their benefit, not mine. How I hate them all :p

Perhaps time and your perception of its passing is only relevant when you feel your life is lacking that key something that works on a deeper emotional level of fulfilment, therefore, you only really begin to notice its passage when you are not otherwise engaged with meaningful experience elsewhere.
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You obviously spent much time and effort composing that.
Look it over in the morning and see what you think.
 
hah, I'll be the first one to admit that sometimes thinking too much is a bad thing :p
On the whole, it's not all doom & gloom, but I think my last paragraph holds true to what I think is key to life being prosaic at times. Don't get me wrong, I don't spend all my time brooding over thunderclouds, far from it - despite indicators to the contrary, I'm generally a positive sort of person, but there's no denying the oft-times negative impact of others. Mitigating that is a distasteful necessity. As for time and effort, I suppose it took as long to write as it did to think about it after I read the op. So not much really. (though I'm not sure what that says about my common train of thought... :eek: :D )
 
jumpy said:
hah, I'll be the first one to admit that sometimes thinking too much is a bad thing :p
On the whole, it's not all doom & gloom, but I think my last paragraph holds true to what I think is key to life being prosaic at times. Don't get me wrong, I don't spend all my time brooding over thunderclouds, far from it - despite indicators to the contrary, I'm generally a positive sort of person, but there's no denying the oft-times negative impact of others. Mitigating that is a distasteful necessity. As for time and effort, I suppose it took as long to write as it did to think about it after I read the op. So not much really. (though I'm not sure what that says about my common train of thought... :eek: :D )
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Funny enough I always feel that time passes quicker when you're enjoying life - or as you put it - having meaningful experiences.

I'm not a great socialiser. For some reason I've never had the skills to talk to most people on a one to one basis very easily.
But time with those people who do appreciate me is very precious and of course passes too quickly.
 
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2bit said:
Well I'm over 40 and ricocheting into oblivion as I type.
It does hit you now and then though... best to make the most when you can. I really don't want too many regrets when I'm a proper old timer although some are are already looking inevitable.
Not too many regrets is all I ask for on my deathbed.
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My Bro is 40 something. lol !! I never listened when people said 'your twenties will go so fast'. Don't tell me my thirties will fly in also :eek:
 
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