We went away for the weekend—to a place we’d never been before. No familiar routines, no rhythm to predict what came next. As soon as we stepped out of our normal world, something strange happened: time stopped behaving.
When you leave your comfort zone, you leave behind the invisible scaffolding that holds your days together: the daily routine, the clock-checking, the predictable of the day unfolding. Instead, everything becomes new. Every sight is unfamiliar, every sound begs you to listen, every moment touches your attention. When it is measured by the unexpected, the intensity, the discovery – it becomes an experience. Time takes you out of the ordinary.
As children anticipation fills so much space. There is so much newness that time expanded to hold it all.
As adults, our days become ordinary by repetition. We’ve seen things so often that we stop seeing them. Our experiences become thinner, more compressed. With less novelty, time slips by unnoticed.
This weekend away, in a place that felt untouched by our familiarity, time opened up again. —almost as if we rediscovered that childlike way of experiencing the world.
Maybe the measure of time is the measure of our attention.
Our wonder.
Our willingness to step outside what we know and let the world surprise us.
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