Does anyone else want everything to stop for a few hours...so we could just BE...without wasting any time...?

For me it helps to listen to relaxing music in the car. Driving time is my time and i relish every second of it. Also depending on my musical mood it can help me relax and take stock in what my day has been like.. good or bad.

David Foster Wallace said he could only feel outside of time when he was writing fiction. This does not mean escapism, or forgetting that time is passing. He is somehow able to feel free from time.

But that is a literary answer and not generally applicable.

Otherwise I would say surroundings reinforce for us the immediate import of time in our daily lives (running errands, upholding deadlines, making it to meetings). The best thing to do sometimes is take a walk, or even a drive. Somewhere you don’t know. It helps me.

I live where my only responsibility’s are to go to the bathroom, eat and drink, oh and breath, very relaxing. I wouldn’t have anything to do if everything stopped.

I appreciate where I am and what I have but I need the world to freeze for a couple of hours so I can stop feeling so much pressure and stress, just for a few hours.

@nxknxk: And look how DF Wallace’s life turned out, in spite of the extraordinary gifts he had.

One of the advantages of getting older and then retiring is the peace and quiet for the choosing.

@gailcalled

Indeed I am happy to say there are easier ways of exiting the temporal for me than an abandonment to the production of dense fiction. I do not envy him.

I get that from sketching for a few hours. Makes me feel good which leads to everything else. And if I’m sketching a person, all the better. The human form is amazing.

Sounds like a couple years in solitary confinement is in order.

I would love that. If you didn’t have kids, you could just build a cabin in the middle of the woods, not take anything electric, or anything to tell time. Soon, you will forget what time it is and there will be no troubles. Perhaps a little like my little Transcendentalist friend Thoreau.

I dream of this daily.

If I could choose a super power it would be the ability to stop time.

Sometimes you just have to remind yourself to fully enjoy that moment and everything about it. Once in a while, I’ll have a time with my kids where I feel like things are perfect. The other day, it was when we were playing in the leaves. Everyone was having fun and being silly, the day was beautiful, and I suddenly thought about how sad it is that the kids are growing up so fast and will soon be too cool to have leaf fights with their mom. :(

Then, I stopped throwing my four year old into the leaf pile long enough to take a deep breath, appreciate that fall tang in the air, how clear the sky was, how nice to have a warm day in November, and how lucky I am to have three such fun, intelligent, healthy, and beautiful children. I hope I always remember that feeling of happiness. I took a lot of pictures to help. I decided I didn’t really need to run inside to make dinner, so I stayed outside playing with them and later threw some sandwiches together. Just appreciating that time, letting it go on instead of rushing to the next thing, and making an effort to remember how special those moments are can help slow down time so you can fully enjoy it. Although I didn’t really enjoy finding bits of leaves in my hair, socks, and underwear later.

okay okay but can we pleaaaaaaaase do it after the Yankees win tonight
please!

I call that “taking a shower”.

Actually, I don’t think you’re asking/looking for the right thing. For all we know you get your wish every moment of the day.

Recognize first the constant nature of time and it’s existence as a part of reality itself. We tend ot think of time as something that is seperate from us. This is wrong, in my opinion. Time is a part of reality.. You are a part of reality.. so that means Time and You are in an important and very real sense One.

If time stopped, you would stop. See what i mean? If time paused, you wouldn’t have a chance to think about things, because you wouldn’t be able to think. The moment time got started again, after the pause, you wouldn’t even notice that it had paused. So, for all we know, maybe time does stop every 10 earth seconds.. maybe it pauses for 43 earth years, then starts again… but because everything Real, such as yourself, depends on time, everything including your thought processes would stop as well.

:P i think i have another suggestion though… can you describe more what it is you’re hoping to accomplish?

@nxknxk: You do know what happened to Wallace on Sept.12, 2008? Read the tragic details in the Wikipedia article.

@gailcalled

I do not envy him in fact because he is dead. And of course the depression. I think he called it nausea of every cell in one’s body.

Sorry if my use of ‘is’ in ‘he is able to be free from time’ suggested I thought he was still alive. That’s my mistake.

Go Yankees

I often have the same sort of feeling. My way of coping is either exercise, I love to run and off road bike but I have a bad knee at the moment so I am finding swimming to be just as freeing.

The other is carving, I just love to take a chunk of wood and find what is hiding inside. I guess I switch to the right side of the brain because hours can pass and I am not aware of it.

Maybe you need one of the running baby buggies, then you could pile your kids in (if they are little) and everyone gets some fresh air. There is a lady here with 4 kids, she piles 3 in the buggy and the oldest one rides his bike along side. They all seem to enjoy it.

@frdelrosario that’s a bit harsh don’t you think? I did say ‘a few hours’ not like…an era…

@ninjacolin I can see your point..and an excellent and rather interesting one it is too…. I’m not sure how to explain what I want more explicitly…um…I was just thinking that maybe what I want is a few extra hours a day…but then time is still ticking as such…and even those will disappear… Perhaps what I want is to exist outside of time and like you say if we are one .. intrinsic to one another that would be impossible… but it still doesn’t stop me from longing for it :-)

I guess it just feels like time is constantly slipping away…and I want to live…perhaps not forever…but for a lot longer than I probably have even in the best case scenario…

Yes, now that’s the Yankess won, as expected, I can stop and enjoy how wonderful life is. and how wonderful it is to beat Pedro

MDMA

Narcotically speaking, many find marijuana provides the sensation of experiencing “more moments per second.” And it happens to be a fairly safe substance that your body can handle and get rid of cleanly within 6 months. :)

@WakeUp: not like pcp I hope.