Time Perception and Quarantine

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

hello

i’m john k coyle and in a former life i

was a olympic speed skater and

as it turns out in the world of sports

small moments of time really matter

right the difference between the gold

medal and the silver medal and

my sport in the olympics of 2002 was 33

100th of a second

and this this this notion that small

incumbents of time

can change everything can change your

trajectory

started to sit with me as i got older in

life and i and i learned that the greeks

actually had a word for this

uh we only have one word for time it’s

called time

and we overuse it right it’s like the

inuit only having one word for snow

the greeks had two words chronos or

clock time

and kairos which is human time

the etymology of kairos is when the

archer releases the arrow

everything happens at once and the

trajectory is reset

as it turns out life is constructed

of these kinds of moments just like in

athletics the value of an increment of

time is not related to its duration it’s

related to its meaning and this actually

has a deep

deep neuroscience underpinning

because as it turns out right now you

and i are creating memories

with our hippocampus back here and it’s

writing memories about every two

seconds and it’s sweeping sweeping them

to long-term memory it might not

remember them

it may or may not but as it does it’s

going to throw away some of those

polaroids that stack of polaroids it’s

creating

throws some of them away it keeps them

some are highly recallable some are not

but the amygdala sits next to the

hippocampus

and the amygdala is what wakes up when

something interesting happens

it wants something new something

different never do that always do that

and so when there’s something scary or

intriguing or interesting or new

it changes the frame rate you start

writing memories at 10 times or more per

second

and this is where time slows down when

something

amazing or scary is happening like a car

wreck or

when you’re about to ask that girl or

guy out for the first time

so time slows down when the amygdala

wakes up because the memory sweeping is

happening so much faster

well this is the really interesting part

we’re now stuck

in this weird crisis this pandemic where

our four walls have closed in and we’re

existing in this space where everything

starts to become the same

and every day starts to blend into the

next i don’t know about you but i lost

may june and july i don’t know where

they went because i was just sitting

home

with a very similar routine and so the

hippocampus amygdala

decided to throw out all those memories

and it was like i was never alive

and this is the danger of what we’re

living in here

this is called in filmmaking the dolly

zoom or vertigo effect it’s when

the camera simultaneously zooms back

while

focusing in and it causes the backdrop

to shrink

even as the foreground grows

well we don’t want that right we want to

be present for all the details and

things going on around us

we want to learn how to slow stop

and reverse this perceived acceleration

of time that most adults feel

and have the endless summers of youth

again

so how to do that well i’ll share with

you

a poem i wrote how long did summer’s

last when we were kids

splashing into the lake riding bikes

across busy streets crushes broken

hearts bruises and dirty knees

we all know summers lasted forever when

we were kids

everything was new we really lived

everything we did

and now how long do they last in this

world so mundane

i don’t know about you but i ache to

live endless summers

again this thing here

it’s a lie we’ve been lied to sidetrack

distracted manipulated this ticking this

talking this terrible terminal tracking

of the ticking of time

teaching us trivial untruths it taught

us that each second is exactly the same

that each minute each hour each day

progresses in a linear way and that each

is the same distance from the last that

these ticks in these talks

are an accurate measure of our past

this thing here doesn’t have one of

these or more accurately it has a whole

bunch of these running at different

speeds

time in our brains doesn’t tick-tock

tick-tock with equal density

time in our brains is dependent on our

experiences and their relative

intensity but wait

time time is like a river right oh sure

time is like a river right

just not this kind of river no time is a

river that ebbs and flows from trickles

to rapids waterfalls and pools they bend

they bow the curve they dry up

and the brain is the same game the river

of time is to blame

the fact is we don’t experience time

always

the same neuroscientists tell us that

the experience of time is relative and

the drivers behind its flexibility are

by their nature

cognitive kahneman he called it thinking

fast and slow

cheek sent me high he called it flow

regardless it is a paradox we all know

that as time accelerates in the present

it expands

in retro your complacent pandemic pace

these things are the warp drive to

temporal hyperspace

you think you’re half done with life or

even less wrong you only have ten

percent of your experiential life are

left for you to save

you have one foot a torso two hands and

a watch in the grave be safe stick with

your routine be comfortable

live the routine and die in a few

temporal seconds good night

you’re dead end of scene

it is time it is time to embrace the

gift that this crisis has given

it is time to unwind the dolly zoom this

vertigo effect that we are all living

it is time to get back out there get

back in there time

to get off the hedonic treadmill time to

unclimb the corporate ladder

i want to climb the ladder of my

internal clock i want to clock the

ladder of my internal climb i want to

slow the hands of father time

and time the slow hands of my fatherhood

i want to kiss my young child’s forehead

and wake to find her still

a child i understand that this kind of

life may mean

suffering for me i will choose this

suffering

rather than let it choose me

it is time it is time to embrace

the gift that this guy crisis has given

it is time to get busy dying

or get busy really living

for those that we love most this most

sacred gift we can give

the gift of expanding time

it is time to really

live