Timey Wimey Jeremy Bearimy

HIIII.

HELLO. I MISS YOU IN REAL LIFE.

What is time how do you measure, measure a year what's in a name of a month is time actually money that seems dumb will humans ever travel through time must we really keep doing this whole daylight savings things would a March by any other name smell as sweet?!?

That's my brain this week. How's yours?

Like everybody, it seems, I've been reflecting a lot on what I was doing at this time last year (if you're reading this much later, ummm, it's been a year since the covid pandemic really accelerated and we got shut down locked down the whole world changed).

Depending on how time works, and who even knows anymore, right around now is when I worked my last day in real person teaching a real live yoga class where we did all stay far away from each other but nobody knew to wear masks and I said, "hey let's all not come to yoga classes anymore until we know what's happening" and two days later Chicago locked down.

And then away we flew and by that I mean we stayed in one place, I sent an email (wrote a blog post) every week, we did some facebook live yoga classes (anybody remember being in my very first FB online class?? I forgot to plug in my laptop and it died right after you all went into savasana. For all I know some of you are still asleep), you were dreamy and supportive of me as I launched this digital studio...

And here we are now.

We've all got our stories, our nostalgia-or-what-is-this-feeling-we're-feeling about 'whoa a whole year that was the last time I (fill in the blank). "Everything's different, nothing's changed, maybe it's just slightly rearranged" is what Sondheim would tell us.

TIME!

DID YOU KNOW that railway companies in America and Canada created the first continental time zones so that trains could have schedules??

DID YOU KNOW daylight savings time was first proposed by a New Zealand man who wanted more daylight hours to go bug hunting after his work shifts (George Hudson! He is said to have "amassed the finest and most perfect collection of New Zealand insects ever formed by any one person," so that worked out for him!), and the whole concept was then adopted by many countries during World War I as a way of conserving energy/electricity, and brought back in the U.S. with the name "war time" during World War II???

DID YOU KNOW there was a study which found that in fact, as we get older, we absolutely experience time as moving faster?? Because when we are younger, each experience is novel, is new, and so it takes more 'time' to . . . write the memory and the brain patterns of that experience (except in fancier science terms). Then, as we age, more of the moments in our days are not as new, and so they take less 'time' to write their patterns on our brains and it can feel to us like time is moving more quickly.

HAVE YOU ever watched Doctor Who and totally agreed that time feels like "wibbly wobbly timey wimey"??

HAVE YOU ever watched The Good Place and suddenly during covidlife totally agreed that time feels all "jeremy bearimy"??

HAVE YOU ever thought to yourself, wow, I wish Allison would use fewer pop culture references for shows I haven't watched??

I KNOW I KNOW I JUST CAN'T HELP MYSELF.

ALL OF THE ABOVE IS TO SAY.

Humans keep on trying to categorize, understand, manipulate, and organize time.

Has it done any good? I dunno.

Anniversaries can be helpful. Marking occasions, marking the passing of this 'time' thing, giving us opportunities for reflection that we might not otherwise make for ourselves. That seems pretty good!

Timelines can be helpful. To understand the chains of cause and effect and to place our individual experiences in the broader picture of collective human experience.

And I think keeping track of time reminds us of life's impermanence.

We are temporal beings.

Things keep moving ahead.

Things keep changing.

We will be swept along whether or not we actively participate.

So why not participate.

IN WHAT?

In life.

However long or short or however you might choose to measure it.

(I measure mine in chocolate and hugs)

(Georgie measured his in daylight and bugs)

(I wish I had one more line, about time, and it could rhyme)