Notes From The Camino: Time
From June 19–July 23, 2024, I walked roughly 779 kilometers across Spain: The Camino.
Roughly 500-miles, I trekked from St. Jean Pierre de Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain on pilgrimage to the Cathedral of the Apostle St. James.
Taking this journey, you learn things you otherwise never would in daily life.
Between the daily planning of mileage, scrounging for food during Spain's?siesta, navigating the myriad of cultural differences and language barriers with the pilgrims from around the world, the Camino packs 10 years of life into 34 days of walking.
It is only after you return home one begins to unpack the abundance of experiences and lessons.
So, sitting in my apartment, as my chin rested on the knuckles of my left hand, my eyes wandered to the discolored spot on my wrist to realize I was no longer wearing my watch.
Time is that which is manufactured by clocks - Herman Bondi
After countless struggles to track my walks in kilometers, assuring my morning alarm would go off silently, and relearning simple math to understand the 24-hour clock, what was central to my daily success became an afterthought.
Yet, for all the ways I used my watch those 34 days, rarely was it to leave the present moment.
It was in the absence of anticipation for what was next that I found my mind at ease.
Lost Time Is Never Found Again… and That's Okay.
We have all been there.
Perhaps we have been the offender.
You're sitting in a meeting, a date, a group hang, or just passing time with a friend.
You're engrossed in the experience, so focused on the present moment, trying to actively listen, to have true conversations and bring forth meaningful moments.?
And you do.
Your boss is showing signs that they appreciate your time and effort, your date tilts their head ever so slightly and smiles as you lock eyes, your friends gasp for air as tears roll down their faces.
As the world passes around you in the background, time seems to stand still as you feel appreciation, love, and joy.
These moments validate the deepest emotions of our existence.
Yet, a subtle shift of the arm, tilt of the head, and disengagement of the eyes steals the breath from our souls.
An uppercut to the abdomen of our being, we feel disregarded when in the midst of these life giving moments, someone checks their watch.
Suddenly, the noise filters back in, the world speeds back up, and we are left feeling secondary to the intricate machine, meticulously measuring the passage of time.
The Brain Has No Clock, Why Do We?
Since 2001, Dr. Peter Ulric Tse of Dartmouth College has researched how our minds perceive certain moments longer than others.
In his research “Attention and the Subjective Expansion of Time” (2004) Dr. Tse explains how after being repeatedly exposed to similar stimuli, presented with a low probability “oddball”, this outlier “tends to last subjectively longer than the high-probability stimulus even when they last the same objective duration” (Abstract).
Simply, when we experience the same things throughout our day, when an unlikely event occurs it lasts longer than all other events of that day.
With Dr. Tse, Dr. David Eagleman, former neuroscience researcher in Baylor University's Labs and current professor at Stanford, worked to understand why this is.
In their research “Time and the Brain: How Subjective Time Relates to Neural Time” (2005), they found though we talk in terms of time, the brain has no internal clock.
Instead, each of our brains has a specific processing rate, and, when this processing rate is increased, we perceive a longer duration of time involved with that we are processing (Eagleman para. 5).
Consistent with Dr. Tse's original research, when we encounter the same events over and over, our brains enter autopilot: the effort needed to process is not high as we are accustomed to the task and its inputs.
However, the moment an oddball is introduced, and we are forced to increase our processing speeds, our brains begin to perceive the additional work needed in that moment as a longer period of time passing.
So, Are We Neo?
The keyword to this point has been perceive: we perceive time to slow down.
Think of it this way.
As our minds increase the processing needed to interact with new, novel, oddball experiences, this processing power engages our memory to a deeper, layered, second level of encoding that allows our recollection of these events to be more detailed (Stenson 2007 para. 19).
This is according to Dr. Eagleman and Dr. Chess Stetson in their research “Does Time Really Slow Down during a Frightening Event” (2007).
In essence, when we have experiences that lie outside our normal day-to-day, our minds engage in a way that forces our brains to pay deeper, more meaningful attention.
Moreover, these moments become core memories as we file them away with far greater texture than those we are accustomed.?
Time Is Suspended on The Camino
For 34 days, with walking the only input, everything becomes an oddball.
When you walk for 6–7 hours, the conversation at the bodega, the rainbow skewed across the sky, the eye roll of a French woman upon hearing you are American, these all become memories stored in the mind at Ultra 4K-HD.
Retelling these encounters, you sit and peel back the layers of the experience, recalling exactly what happened as it happened, dictating it moment by moment as if you were right back in it.
But most of us don't walk for 6–7 hours a day.
Instead, we keep routines that mimic the trudge that sets in after day 14.
Yet, rarely do we capture the nuance that makes each day unique.
We are too busy checking our wrist: we are too busy anticipating what's next instead of looking at what's now.
The Technology Free Mindfulness Hack.
In 2020, over 7 million people downloaded apps to help them be mindful (Finances Online, 2024).
By 2025, the mindfulness app space is expected to have grown by 2.1 billion dollars (Finances Online, 2024).
We all crave the presence of mind to slow down time, yet far too many of us do not do the simple task of removing our watch.
Wearing a watch is an unconscious signal to yourself that whatever moments you currently are in, some other moment is coming at a specified, known time, and is of far more importance.
We negate the possibility of the novel oddball in our daily lives by diverting our attention from the present, failing to fully engage with the newness before us, and instead focusing on some fictitious future.
Moreover, the future is stripped of its novelty as we prepare for it: we mentally step into scenarios before they even exist, rehearsing them in advance.
There are so many novel experiences we miss each day as we peer at our watch or lift our phones.
There are so many memories we leave behind because we choose to be slaves to our idiosyncratic routines that pacify and coddle our minds into a sullen state of safety in the form of a predictable routine.
Yes, there will always be moments where we truly need to know what time it is, as meetings and schedules are necessary.
I wager these moments exist far less than we think.
Live in the Present Moment
I know box breathing, mantras, and various forms of stretching do benefit us.
But, I also know there are far easier steps we can take.
Be open to what the day has to offer you.
Be present to the moments begging for your ideas, your experiences, and your being.
If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been. (Shklovsky, 2004, p. 16)
There is deep benefit to the routines of our lives.
I am not saying we should not establish a routine.
Our schedules allow our minds to understand what we need and when.
Yet, the brain does not have a clock.
It processes information as it comes with varying levels of engagement.
To stretch time, to extend the moments of our lives, we need not seek out moments that yank us from the lives we live.
In moderation, yes, vacations, long weekends, and even backpacking trips across Europe can provide time to reflect and assess changes we need to implement to the routines we inhabit.
However, the lives we live, the world we interact with, provides us moments each day that beg for our attention.
Before my fellow Huberman Lab listeners call to circadian rhythms, recall these rhythms are based in our biology: responses to hormones and light not hours and minutes. We would feel tired or desire a nap regardless if we knew the time or not. Consider, with circadian rhythms our body wakes up without ever seeing the time.
Still, we know nothing feels worse than sitting with someone and seeing them check their watch or ask what time it is because they have somewhere else to be.
So, why are you wearing a watch or looking at the clock when you are alone: what are you telling yourself?
Eagleman, D. M., Tse, P. U., Buonomano, D., Janssen, P., Nobre, A. C., & Holcombe, A. O. (2005). Time and the brain: How subjective time relates to neural time. The Journal of Neuroscience, 25(45), 10369-10371. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3487-05.2005
Finances Online. (2024). 50 essential meditation statistics for 2024: Benefits, technology & practice data. Finances Online. Retrieved August 9, 2024, from https://financesonline.com/meditation-statistics/
Shklovsky, V. (2004). Art as technique. In J. Rivkin & M. Ryan (Eds.), Literary theory: An anthology (2nd ed., pp. 15-21). Blackwell Publishing.
Stetson, C., Fiesta, M. P., & Eagleman, D. M. (2007). Does time really slow down during a frightening event?. PloS one, 2(12), e1295. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001295
Tse, P. U., Intriligator, J., Rivest, J., & Cavanagh, P. (2004). Attention and the subjective expansion of time. Perception & psychophysics, 66(7), 1171–1189. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03196844
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4 个月Jason, thank you for sharing all of this about your experience! Learning about The Camino de Santiago at Dominican was so intriguing, but actually seeing someone you know complete it, gives it a whole new light. I'm so happy you were able to go on this adventure!