Wait: a concept of theory of relativity

When I was preparing for engineering, there was this concept of Theory of Relativity; developed by a great scientist Einstein. And I used to dread those lectures and longer the lectures seemed. Why on earth I would like to know whether two trains running towards each other appear to be faster than those running away from each other.

Nobody taught me that it is well applied when it comes to life.

How difficult is to wait?

So, let me answer this question that makes many of us wonder why we have to wait longer when we expect time to go by swiftly and on the contrary, time seems to fly by when we wish to linger on.

Let me put the ever-confusing, ever-frustrating theory of relativity to some good use now. The higher is the anticipation of occurrence of events, the longer the wait seems. Or in other words, the time seems to be dragging its feet. The lesser the anticipation, shorter is the wait.

The absolute value of time loses its essence in this process. The relative time interval becomes directly proportional to the degree of the anticipation.
Hence, someone waiting for 1 minute to catch his breath out of suffocation, the wait is as long as the person waiting for arrival of bus for 1 hour.

The emotions triggered is also not dependent on the absolute time interval, rather is on the relative time span spent in waiting. And that is why, it depends whether the 1 day for a person dying tomorrow is like a lifetime or a second on how he anticipates his tomorrow. Whether he dreads the arrival of his death time or is tired of his existence from long suffering.

It is not how much time has lapsed, it is how much time ‘you think’ has lapsed that matters.

And so is true for the concept of age. It is the anticipation of the time you think you have lived so far and not the absolute years that have gone by. Here goes the insight behind the famous lines, “Abhi toh main jawan hun.”

We come back to the question raised, how difficult is to wait?

It is not this question that needs to be answered but the question is how much can you control your expectations. If you can train your mind to not expect earlier the good events and not delay the dreadful events, you can enjoy the power of absolute time.

Or better yet: train your mind to delay the good things and expect earlier the worst ones.

The power is not in the hands of time but in your mind!