The Long Minute
It’s funny how time works. Given one set of circumstances, time can speed past at Mach 5, so that things are over almost before you know they’re happening. Given a different set of circumstances, time can drag so slowly that you wonder if things are ever going to end. An hour in the pool with friends on a hot day seems to last no time at all, while an hour waiting in the doctor’s office seems like an eternity.
I’m thinking of this because it seems incredible to me that it has been more than a week since my last blog post. And when I think back over what I’ve done in that week, it’s just astounding.
I spent a good bit of time in the office (of course). Some of that time was at warp speed, some of it slower than glacier-creep. Why is it that when locked in the epic struggle with mathematics, formulae, and spreadsheets, the time seems to speed by me? (I’m not having fun, I assure you.) But when I am filing or listening to angry clients rant, time drags.
I spent some time in karate class, too. (Also “of course,” for anyone who knows me.) Karate almost always seems to go too fast, though I can remember a time when it didn’t. My first few months, the warm-up time–with its sit-ups, push-ups, and jumping jacks–was pure hell. I didn’t (and still don’t) mind the stretching bit at all. But the rest of the warm-up was torture. I don’t mind the warm-ups so much now. But karate has taught me a lot about the “long minute.”
It started, really, with the bullring. In our school, we do a lot of self defence. You begin learning the techniques at yellow belt, and once you have learnt the techniques, you are expected to perform them (gently and with intense control) against your classmates. Part of every rank test is the bullring. The testing student stands in the middle of a marked-out section of floor (we train in a gym, so the basketball center-court ring serves nicely) and three to six classmates stand around the edges of the ring. At the Sensei’s signal, the classmates charge the test-taker, who must defend against the various attacks using the pre-set forms that he has been learning. This attack-and-defend practise continues for one minute.
The first time I faced the bullring, I was afraid. For a number of reasons, most of which had nothing to do with my ego, and everything to do with flashbacks from the past. And if I had thought that the 45 seconds it took me to demonstrate my first kata was long, it was nothing to that long, long, long minute in the bullring.
There have been other long minutes in karate class. The long minute when I am supposed to be teaching a form that I ought to know, but I get in front of the group and can’t remember my own name, much less whether the front snap kick is followed by a double-punch or some kind of block … or some random thing that escapes me completely. When you are walking people through a form that they have never done (and assuming that you take very seriously the responsibility to teach it correctly), the fifteen to thirty seconds it can take to remember the next move can seem like an hour.
Or the long minute when you are in the middle of a rank test and the Sensei asks you a question about your form, or a basic skill, or your memory work, and your brain does the blue screen of death on you. Yeah. Face-to-face with the Sensei and both speechless and unable to think. Verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry long minute.
Or there is the drive to our sister school, across the river. According to MapQuest, it’s a 30 minute drive. But heading over there, it often seems like it takes an hour to get there. Going home seems to take no time at all. (Unless I miss the freeway ramp and end up in Millington. Then it takes forever to get home.) I can’t figure out if it seems longer to get there because I’m impatient to get there and see my friends and enjoy the workout, or if there’s some weird aspect to the traffic pattern that makes it seem longer.
And then there is family time. I spent Sunday with my family, eating, swimming, fishing, and celebrating several birthdays. We were together for eight hours. It seemed so much shorter than that. It definitely seemed a lot shorter than my typical work-day.
Time is also affected by health factors. If I am hungry or let my blood sugar get too low, time sort of stretches out like the highway across Kansas, with no end in sight. Time stretches itself even longer when I am sleep deprived, as has been the case over the last few days of very late nights prepping my Boy Scout for a five-day campout while still having to rise at my usual hour to get to work on time.
I’ve had a lot of long minutes in this past week. I would like to place my order right now for some normal-length minutes, and I wouldn’t object to a few short ones thrown into the mix. I’m hoping that the rest of this week will be more evenly measured. (I’m also hoping to get some sleep, now that Scout Boy is safely off to camp.)