Things...

The two cultures that I'm familiar with both have some kind of expression describing how time is perceived to flow faster than it actually does. Something like "time flies" in the English speaking culture. The statement stands true looking back at my life. I'm already 33 while I have some vivid memories of my childhood. Some memories seem like it happened yesterday just like how Koreans say to express how time flies.

However, sometimes time wouldn't go just fast enough. You rarely feel that way about the past because you think about the past as a whole. But time may be perceived to flow slowly when you are living in the moment. Classes in school felt too long most of the time. A road trip to Disney World from Indiana which took two full days was too long for me when I was 7. So, sometimes I would joke about this by saying this has something to do with the theory of relativity. Are you asking general or special relativity? Wait for it.

And today I realized that it really does. The term "heavy" was used to express the seriousness of a situation back in the late 80's. One of the words that are used in Korea to indicate the significance, importance, or seriousness of a situation(중대한) consists of the Chinese character meaning heavy.

Could it be a coincidence? Well, there  is a great deal of areas where cultures around the world share common sense. Anyway, I was wishing that time would fly by really fast at the moment. And I realized my perception of time flow is slow right now because I'm personally in a serious and not to mention even a painful situation. In other words, the situation is heavy for me.

Albert Einstein predicted gravitational time dilation in the theory of general relativity. I'm no expert on this but I think science is telling that it is true so far. You will be familiar with the concept if you've seen the movie Interstellar. Time flows slower in areas where affected by a greater gravitational force to an observer at a distance where gravitational force has little affect.

So, to be precise, the situation I'm in may be mitigating. Therefore, the situation is getting lighter. Time could not be perceived at present because there is no range of time in the present. As a result, I'm only looking at my recent(maybe in about 100 ms considering my ability to assess and analyze my situation and feeling, and become aware of the time being flown to perceive time) past to perceive time. And since I'm observing from a side where the situation is lighter, I perceive time to be flowing slowly. So, on the bright side, I think this is because the situation is mitigating. When things get worse, time would fly by so fast again.