Make Time Move Slow

 “Make time go slow.”

At SPARC 2025, life was moving too fast. There was always something fun to do, and a distraction was always there if I wanted it. So this piece of advice during the class we had on meditation felt perfectly timed. The next day, instead of going to class, I took a walk along the cliffside and just sat there. I sat there staring, letting my existence sink in.

Writing this blog is probably the slowest my life has been in the past month, and it started with me letting my existence sink in (my roommate will tell you I spent a lot of today just staring at our ceiling). But even now, I have to intentionally move slowly, to prevent myself from joining the ping pong games running outside or the groups of people going to parties outside my window. Once I stopped filling every moment, I started noticing the things I kept saying I wanted to do but never made time for.

When I talked to my friend about lacking motivation to do things that actually improve me, a piece of advice I got was that “the rocks are always there.” This friend was big into rock climbing, and thinking about climbing this way made her more intentional about practicing. Every day, the rocks were staring her down, and all she had to do was conquer them.

And I feel this with most things I do. When I play the guitar, it feels more gratifying and permanent (“it's always there”) afterwards than these ephemeral social interactions that feel fun in the moment. And time moves a lot slower when I’m trying something new. I’d often play for around 30 minutes, and feel really satisfied with what I’d practiced, whereas 30 minutes of social interaction often leaves me longing for more.

Time moves really slow when you’re doing something hard, and you often feel like resorting to activities that go fast. But if you force yourself out of that state, your mind latches onto hitting that V7 or playing that new piece. If you disconnect from everything that could make life go fast, you feel more present with what you’re doing, and every minute of the process feels excruciatingly difficult.

Whenever I checked the clock and saw that I’d only practiced for fifteen minutes, I thought about how quickly an evening playing cards could disappear. I still wanted those evenings. But I was starting to want something else, too: time that didn’t just vanish, and where I felt every second of it.