Life in the Fast Lane...

I had a dinner conversation a few nights ago that I've thought about every 10 minutes since its inception. That's what a great dinner is all about; unbelievable food with [hopefully] some new/different perspectives on things. I was talking to a science professor at a well known northeast university and his views on some existential topics were fascinating. The amount of alcohol consumed also contributed to this and might come into play during my recap of the night.

We started talking about the end of Summer and people operating in such haste. Is it because they feel the need to cram everything in before the kids go back to school their lives start again? Maybe they felt like they hadn't accomplished as much as they wanted to, so they're taking it out on everybody else?  Or could it be the oppressive heat?

We moved onto the speed in which people operate. When you're young, you're observing everything. As you age, the more you use those observations to help you get an edge, get ahead, or feel a sense of advancement. At some point, during this "advancement" period, something either clicks or it doesn't. The professor said you reach terminal velocity. You can't go any faster. Or so it seems. He noted that, in the process of growing up, once a person reaches terminal velocity, they can't go any faster because time [or your world] slows down for them. He then related this theory to the 70's short film, The Powers of Ten. Here take a look:

At first, you're zoomin'! Then, as you realize that things are progressing at the same speed, you recalibrate, and what started off as speeding up actually starts to look like it's slowing down. The sports analogy would be a young Quarterback leading his team to victory in the clutch. How many times in post-game speeches have you actually heard guys say, "everything just kind of slowed down for me out there and I was able to really focus and get it done today."

The professor was blinding me with science. So when does this slowing down, almost zen-like transformation phase begin?

"It's like everything else in this world," the professor said. "It's a bell curve. Eventually, you hit an apex in your life when that decision is made for you."

He brought up an example of an experiment conducted with different people looking at pictures. The pictures were mostly of graphic, disgusting nature with a few pictures depicting happiness. After viewing the pictures, people were asked to talk about what they saw. Most people went on, in-depth, about the multitude of disgusting things they were shown. But, most of the older demographic only described the nice looking picture that occurred maybe once every 25 images. They could accept and ignore the majority of things they didn't want to see and focus on what they did want to see. They had slowed down and only remembered the positive things they saw. And they described them in great detail.

"Sounds like how most people describe the impact of having a child," I said.
"That changes a lot of things," he said jokingly. "What we're talking about is the evolution of that life, from speeding up to hitting the apex on the bell curve, hitting terminal velocity, and slowing down. Except it's not really slowing down, it's becoming used to that speed, giving you the appearance of slowing down. You're consciously speeding towards something, which I hope is worth it, because when time slows down, you're going to want to enjoy what you're observing. That's what makes people slow down. Observing happiness."

Steam was starting to come out of my orifices precluding my brains spontaneous combustion.

"I mean, if you find this interesting, what you should start looking at is Einstein's Theory of Relativity, because that's what we're really diving into," he exclaimed!

Yes. You read that correctly. Somebody actually suggested I look into E=MC②.

That's when I sped up to the bar and ordered another Martini, hoping it would help slow me down. Or use it to put out the flames on my already smoldering brain.