Is Time Elastic?

So many times I hear the phrase, ‘Live today like it’s your last’.

I suppose the idea is that it will make you truly appreciate what you have and treat your time as precious. Perhaps you won’t sweat the small stuff and leave the big ticket items to themselves, after all, you’ll never sort them in a day and that’s all you have so why bother?

I find this sentiment shrinks time for me. It condenses it into a finite measure of 24 hours broken down into smaller chunks of time that are rapidly eaten up with everyday nonsense. Stress is worse - how best to fill these precious moments, what would I regret if I didn’t do it today and died tomorrow? Time is a stiff cord that can easily snap.

The notion of ‘all the time in the world’ for me, makes time more elastic. I feel that, if I tell myself to slow down and take my time I achieve more and consume less energy. I calm down my tendency to over think, procrastinate and generally worry the life out of every small detail.

Telling myself that I will focus on this till it’s done and not telling myself that it has to be done in an hour softens time. There is no ticking clock eating through time just me, a pencil or two and a world of imagination.