Time is a social construct. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist or isn’t real, but rather that it has no meaning out of our collective human experience. Together, we have made it into something. Time is also relative, and nothing makes that so obvious as how slowly it passes before Iftar and how quickly it zooms by after. So, yes, we know that it’s mostly just us perceiving it going by slower than a sloth swimming in molasses but that doesn’t make the feeling any less painful. Ironically, at the end of Ramadan, it will feel like it was over in the blink of an eye.
Wait! We are practical, problem-solving people and we have some tricks up our sleeves to make waiting much more pleasant and enjoyable, whether you need to get through the hours to break your fast or the weeks until you can go out again.
Rule number 1 about the Faster Time Club is we do not talk about time. Or at least, we take down the wall clocks, take off our wrist watches and tape over the taskbar on our screens so we become fully unaware of exactly what time it is. It might sound extreme, but accepting that you have no control over time is easier when you completely disengage from it and refuse to acknowledge it.
Having fun is a great way to squander away a few hours. If you are old enough to know how to use a rotary phone then you know that you can call a friend and chat for hours. It is more immersive than texting, much more personal and helps foster deeper connections. Better yet, call someone you dislike and dare yourself to keep them on the line for as long as possible. You might either like them more in the end or get blocked by them permanently. Double-win!
Time really seems to go by faster when you are fully engaged in something. Usually, that means something challenging. So go figure out how to solve a Rubik’s cube, conquer long division, or build a city, it doesn’t matter what it really is. The real trick here is being stubborn enough not to give up no matter what. Be as obstinate as possible, obsessed with solving the problem and refuse to let go until you figure it out.
Read a twisty page turner. Mysteries and thrillers are perfect for this. The kind that makes you hold your breath as you read, wondering whodunnit? If you are really invested in a story, you get so engrossed in it and lose all sense of time and space. But the ultimate time vacuum is philosophy books! They tend to be complicated, reflective and recursive in a strange way, a good one might even push you into an existential crisis so deep it might take you days to climb your way out. Do your morals make sense? Do you have an answer for these dilemmas? Are we even real? The trick here is to keep asking questions. If this feels overwhelming you can start with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Yes, the Roman emperor. The book is freely and legally available all over the internet because it is ancient. If anything, you will learn how to live a life of Stoicism, which might help you when you are bored out of your brains or while dealing with a pandemic
The kitchen is a wonderful place to lose yourself for an hour or two, especially during Ramadan. To make cooking/baking take more time than it should, start as late as you possibly can. If the recipe says you need two hours to make this dish, then start cooking exactly two hours before Iftar. You need to create fake stress for this to work and make time fly by. The pressure needs to be on and you need to hustle. Have your own Master Chef moment! Choose something complicated with techniques that are new to you, so you’re forced to focus and concentrate. But also maybe make sure you have something you can eat just in case this fails miserably.
This last one is a personal favorite. Purposefully fall down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. If you have never tried this, you are in for a ride! Pick a random topic, or something that interests you, find its page and read it, then click on any random link in that page to a different but related topic. Keep going until you hit a page that has no links you can click on. You can always repeat this if you still have time left on your hands, but normally you won’t need to because this is a real time suck. Bonus points if you decide to actually research the topic from other sources and edit the Wikipedia pages to fix them.
Of course, alternatively, you could actually do something more useful, but who has the time for that?
Image by rawpixel.com
