"What is Time?"

Dane Leehman

FYS—What is Time?

Experiences with Time

9/16/2012

Cherishing the Moment

Time stood still.  Lord Botetourt had just dumbfounded our defense, opening up an uncontested layup with no more difficulty than a can opener has piercing into aluminum. The game was tied at 51-51.  Our men were tired, worn from the long, nail-biting battle but 7.6 seconds still remained on the clock.  We could not survive through an overtime period—they had all of the momentum after overcoming a 15-point halftime deficit.  Coach Day was forced to burn our last timeout.  He ripped out the whiteboard and drew up a foolproof strategy designed to get Destiny, our best shooter, wide open for a heart-breaking three pointer. My teammates and I hustled to our respective positions after breaking the huddle.

Krulich received the ball just behind the half-line.  My job was simple—I was the barrier, the screen positioned on the baseline which would block Destiny’s man, opening him up for the dagger.  Krulich took two quick dribbles toward my side of the court and waited for Destiny to be abandoned for the baseline three.  They saw right through our trickery and both Destiny’s man and my own shifted out to cover our ace shooter, leaving me wide open 12 feet from the basket.  Eyes focused directly on Destiny, Krulich bee-lined the ball into my hands.  Right foot pivoted and left foot followed as I leaped into my well-practiced rhythm.  The ball held the weight of the world, but it lifted off my fingertips lighter than a feather and propelled toward the basket.  It hovered in the air, dwindling as it came into its descent, taunting and teasing.  The clock was still winding down at a normal pace, but each moment the ball was in the air was longer and denser.  It reached the rim and danced a marvelous dance, dazzling the crowd and hypnotizing with each twist and spin around the side of the hoop.  All of a sudden, swoosh, whack, REEEHHNNTTTT—the clock had reached zero, the moment we had waited 32 minutes for.  A rush of heat and emotion, the roar of the home crown, and a gush of brisk air as my team stampeded me.  I yelled inconsolably and victoriously, overwhelmed with pride and passion—I was the hero tonight.

Looking back now, I realize that I did not play a particularly amazing game that night.  The game winning shot provided the only two points I scored the entire night whereas Destiny had knocked down 24 and Krulich contributed 10 of his own, and yet I was celebrated as winning the game for my team.   Why did my one shot bear more weight than the 10 shots Destiny had buried?  How was it that those last 7.6 seconds, nay the last .8 seconds as the ball traveled through the air seemed infinitely longer than the rest of the game leading up to those points?  Why is it that a kid can breeze through seven hours of video games when they are unable to spend five minutes waiting in a shopping line?  Time is an impossible riddle, an indefinite trickster.  The way we perceive time in one moment can be completely different than any another and that is why it is difficult to answer any of these questions absolutely.

When I was young boy, my mother forced me to play piano.  She insisted that it helps open young minds and improves rhythm, balance, and harmony with practice.  This hobby held me to a rigid schedule; every Monday and Friday I would meet with my teacher for an hour and a half and every other day I would be expected to practice at least an hour.  This was easy to maintain over the summer when free time was so abundant boredom was around every corner, but harder when schoolwork was piling up on top of being a multidimensional athlete.  My schedule was compressed and binding.  Some weeks would drag on while others seemed be past before they were ever present, over with the snap of a finger.  This has always been amazing to me—how any given increment of time can fly like an arrow or stick like a beached whale which is why the standard measurements (or really any constant measurement) of time are impractical to me.  How can we say someone has lived for seventy years without knowing whether they lived each moment to its fullest or dismissed chunks of their lives not valuing the time they have?  We each dictate how long we live.  An hour spent watching television can be infinitesimal and dismissible while a moment spent with a loved one can be immortal.  Furthermore, if you barely and painfully manage to get through an hour of work that is subsequently forgotten by the next hour spent with friends that you will remember and relive every day, how can the two hours be considered equal?  Time is dictated by the life we squeeze out of it, not by how many times a hand spins around the face of a clock.

This spring I was diagnosed with a minor heart condition.  I was told in February that two months later I would have to have a surgery.  At the time I thought nothing of it—it was an eternity away and therefore played little impact in my day-to-day life.  But as the days drove on, I could feel April 27^th knocking louder and louder on the door of fate.  I panicked.  Although it is an inexcusably overused cliché, I saw my life flash before my eyes.  I remembered skipping school to go fishing with my mom at age 6.  I remembered the family trip to Hawaii where I saw true beauty and innovation at age 9.  I remembered the moment right before I fell unconscious as I was cleated in the face playing goalie in soccer at age 14.  All the events leading up to this life-defining surgery collaborated, meshed, and unified in the blink of an eye.  I had condensed my entire life into one pinnacle moment.  My heart rushed with anticipation and confusion—lack of understanding, but it only took one long, drawn-out breath to calm myself and regain my composure and the continuum began to race ahead at normal pace.

Although it is necessary for society to function and progress into the future, the definition of time we have grown to accept is grossly oversimplified and unrepresentative.  We must construct our own definition of time and accept the fact that any moment we will never forget is immensely longer than a day our mind dismisses.  Everyone has experienced an hour which shoots past as well as a moment which seemed like it would never end.  To have a valuable and well-lived life we must each strive to value each and every moment within that life.  This is why we cannot take any situation for granted.  We have the power to make our own lives immortal because any moment can last an eternity.  The challenge is finding true inspiration and each remarkable feature within every passing second.  Life is what you make of it…

“Today is the most important day of my life.” Or so I, a five-year-old child, with a great seriousness, told my mother on August 25^th, 1999, before stepping into my kindergarten classroom for the first time. There are many aspects of the statement I made that day, my memory of it, other affiliated memories and the ways in which all these things relate to my temporal experience, which has mostly been defined by school hours and school years, that I wish to explore.

My first day of kindergarten was, as so many days have been, an important one to me. My first first day, my last first day and all the first days in between those two make up a group of  exciting days which collectively require pictures taken outside in the driveway, excitement and the perfect outfit. While I recognize that August 25^th of my kindergarten year was an important step in my scholarly pursuit, I would no longer label that day as “the most important day of my life.” While that model of understanding the importance of the day may have been appropriate in the moment, my views have changed. I now have a healthy fondness for the archetypal first day of school, which represents but does not equal each particular first day of school.

Each of these first days was, for its part, a beginning and, starting after kindergarten, a recurrence. My school career has been made up of twelve years, each year of a number of weeks, each week of approximately five days, and each day of roughly seven hours. If we attempt to break down these hours more, which we certainly may, we will encounter a problem with which Augustine has already grappled in Book Eleven of his Confessions. This exact problem was never one that occupied my brain for a great length of time, but the repetition in each hour, each day, each week, and each year has been an ever-constant, regular cycle in my life by which I have measured time and on which timeline I have marked the events of my life. For example, I had Physics class for two hours every day my junior year; I went to Argentina during the summer after that year.

I have already revealed with my changed interpretation one way in which my introductory statement is fallacious, and there are two other possible ways in which my memory may be flawed. One of these ways relates to the fact that my memory of that day is imperfect and secondhand. I can provide the day, the direct quotation, and the identities of the people involved in this exchange of words, but this is not because I explicitly remember the day and the conversation. Rather, I have this capability because my mother has told me on at least three separate occasions how adorable it was that I called my first day of kindergarten “the most important day of my life” with a straight face and an inordinate gravity. There are many other examples of moments at which I can look with fondness solely because of secondhand memories due to stories or photographs, such as an afternoon spent on the floor of the living room with my aunt’s dog Zeke, during which he obligingly endured my veterinarian game and my somewhat hideous blue zigzag-patterned sweater. It is interesting to contemplate the effect that secondhand memories have on a person’s temporal experience, particularly pertaining to the earliest years of one’s life.

The other way my memory may be erroneous is regarding the date of my foolish statement. In my memory, school always started on August 25^th, and it always started on a Wednesday. This rule is absurd, however, because August 25^th isn’t always a Wednesday. I cannot remember a time when school did not start for me on August 25^th, but I know that at some point it may have because this year classes started for the Chapel Hill – Carrboro City Schools district on the 27^th of August. Due to the pattern I once noticed and never forgot, my (already secondhand) memory is degraded because I impose the date of “Wednesday, August 25^th” onto each first-day memory I have. This distortion may not be in a meaningful way, as the generalization does not alter the content of my memory. However, acknowledging the slight change in the way I remember that day causes me to wonder what other patterns may have made themselves evident in my memories. If other patterns or generalizations I’ve noticed or made have replaced the truth in my memories, I fear I am not likely to recognize and correct them. The realization of this “August 25^th” pattern and its possibly leading me to blunder makes me afraid that large components of my temporal existence have been similarly tainted.

In my exploration of my statement to my mother on or about August 25^th, 1999, I’ve realized a few things about my temporal existence, my memories, and how these two concepts are interconnected. My temporal existence has been largely if not completely defined by school, be that definition in increments of years, semesters, classes or hours. What there is of my temporal existence, however my understanding of it may be structured, is not perfect. Some flaws originate in secondhand memories, affecting how my brain stores the information regarding each moment in my past. Other flaws originate from patterns I superimpose onto my memories to classify them or generalize them. These two sources of distortion in memory could also combine. That is, my mother could have applied her own patterns to her memory of “August 25^th, 1999” before she told me the story herself. It seems to me that one’s temporal existence is not entirely under one’s own control.

When an individual thinks about the word “time”, there are almost infinite amounts of ways to perceive and interpret that one simple word and people since the beginning of age have been searching and attempting to label time as a certain entity, but various debate has arisen from the different points of view presented.   In the following text, I will thoroughly explain my perception of time and how it has been a factor in various instances throughout my life

There are many thoughts that rush through my head when I come across the word time.  The overwhelming connotation when anyone hears that word is to think about a clock, a watch, or numerically as in a certain time of day, typically.  This is the modern way of measuring time in a 24 hour day and most people don’t think of time as any more complex than that.  However, I think there is a lot more that time encompasses than just “a quarter past one”.  The origins of the beginning of time, I believe, date back to when God first created the universe and everything in it, including the notion of time.  It was not measured by a 24 hour day obviously but it existed and the rising and setting of the sun continuously was an indicator of the incessant cycle of time.   The same time that began so long ago is the exact same time we come into contact with every second of everyday.  I believe that time is on a continuous spectrum and consists of a past, present, and future.  It began at one precise instant and will continue to exist in the same way it has for the rest of eternity encompassing the present and future as people come into the word and leave it to an afterlife.  It is never staying still and what was the present time a second ago is now the past and the future occurs in the minute that’s about to happen but hasn’t transpired quite yet.  Time is never discrete or standing still.  Nevertheless, there are instances in which time seems to stand still and the seconds and minutes seem to slow down when oneself is doing something boring for example.  Conversely, there are instances when I have been participating in a fun activity with my friends and time seemed to race by and I couldn’t fathom that time had passed by so incredibly quickly.  In reality, the same amount of time could have passed in both situations but the subconscious elucidation the brain makes gives us the sense of time either slowing down or speeding up.  Conversely, not every period of time has to speed up or slowdown in the mind but can apply to individual situation.  Memory is also another major component when perceiving time if not one of the most influential factors out there.  Every single perception we have of past time is due to our brain’s interpretation of these past occurrences through our memory.  Instances in the past time can only be labeled as recently occurred or in the distant past through the use of an individual’s memory.  Moreover, some people may perceive time in the past differently than another.  When dealing with time in the future, it is clear that time isn’t going to stop and that future time is eminent but can we perceive this time before it becomes the present?  On the night of Christmas Eve, for me, time seems to stand still because I am anticipating the future event of Christmas morning that I know is soon to come but regardless is still in the future.  In spite of this however, my past memory of the excitement of Christmas day from past experiences was able to help me make this connection with a future event that hadn’t even taken place.  The speeding up and slowing down of time varies by individual perception and memory plays a huge role in this phenomena.

With my belief in time being continuous, I believe certain events in our life break up this continuous time into interpretable increments.  For example, age can be a good, broad indicator of time.  I am 18 years of age and that means that I have experienced 18 years of time, yet time didn’t start when I was born, it had been continuing from its origins.  The small event of my life would represent an increment to break down the immense theme of time in a way to relate it to my life.  We can break down those 18 years even further as in the four years I was in high school.  Those four years comprise an amount of time and an event by which time can be measured across its unremitting range.  In looking at time in this manor, it allows me to break down my life in a way that’s not numeric but is more representative of experiences and is some way of measuring and perceiving them.  One can also examine the essence of time as sometimes existing and sometimes not.  For an individual sleeping and is not consciously awake, does the time not pass by until they are awake or does it continue on endlessly?  I personally believe that time as whole never stops for anything, it tangibly cannot for any reason, but for the individual sleeping, their time as an individual living I feel stops until they are consciously active but the concept of universal time passes them by regardless of the circumstances.  During deep sleep, dreaming occurs in which the mind projects thoughts into images that we feel we are living and we feel we are experiencing time in a normal manor but we are still motionless and unconscious in reality.  Once awake, time dictates peoples almost every move in terms of having to be somewhere at a certain time and basically is overwhelming to society; yet, when looking past this fact, time is a very complex and daunting object that has been created in a moment and will be continuing on encircling my life forevermore.

My previous experience with time perception has been assumedly quite similar to most other minors to my knowledge. Fun times seem to pass with great speed, while the more boring instances seem to take loads of time. I’ve found that the current mindset of a person has a direct relationship with the speed at which they perceive time to pass. This seems to be true for extended periods of time such as an entire season as well as short moments in a day.

I’ve had numerous experiences where time seems to pass in no time at all, and I would consider them all highlights of my life. Several vacations come to mind at my grandparents’ beach cottage. These were all positive experiences as I remember them and I was very rarely inactive at any time of these vacation periods. My mind was constantly stimulated by new people, scenery, and activities I couldn’t partake in at home such as playing in the waves or ocean fishing. Also, my trip to Ireland in 2008 lasted three weeks, yet it seemed like less than twenty four hours in hindsight. Football season always seems to pass much faster than the rest of the year and it is also my favorite, busiest, and most exciting season of the year. It seems that at my most enjoyable times are the ones that last the least amount of time. That is strictly that way it is perceived, however.

Conversely, the moments in life that I enjoy the least seem to last the longest. Whenever I got in trouble at school, I was generally taken away from an activity and made to wait or talk with a correctional teacher. Either way, I was taken out of an activity I would rather do, and therefore I was subconsciously counting the time until I could get back to my previous activity. The fact that my mind was not fully engaged in an activity made it seem like a longer period of time. Similarly, my least favorite classes seemed to take the longest because I was much more conscious of the clock and eager to get to my next class. It seems that when I am engaged in a less enjoyable activity, I am more likely to focus on the passing time to help gauge the amount of time I have left in that activity.

The perceived speed of time passing, in my experience, has everything to do with the amount of stimulation in my mind at the time. The more I am occupied, the faster time moves. This would explain why time is much slower when you are consciously staring at a clock rather than daydreaming mindlessly. Staring at a clock involves little mental activity whereas daydreaming allows your mind to subconsciously reflect on previous events or prepare for upcoming ones. An occupied mind is much more active than a mind set on an elementary task or a mind with very little to think about. This is why an occupied person would never think to look at a clock to see how much time it has left. They would just enjoy their activity for as long as they can until they are forced to stop. On the other hand, a bored person will periodically check the time because they are eager to change to an activity where they are more active and satisfied. For example, the hardest part of writing a paper is coming up with an idea to phrase. In this stage, you have to actively get your mind to produce thought and get on track with what you want to accomplish. This may take more time for some rather than others, but it consistently feels like the longest part of writing a paper. If I get sidetracked, I have to restart the process of getting my mind on topic and active and this is what seems to take forever in writing. Once I have a topic in my mind, it is easy to just hold that thought and transfer it into phrases on a computer. This is the task my mind would rather be doing as opposed to creating ideas from scratch.

Recently, I have begun to take the advice of “living in the moment,” and it seems to be working out quite well for me so far. In every activity I do, I treat it like it would be my last thing to experience on Earth. This relates to time because it has made everything I do seem to happen faster. I’m not sure if it has improved the quality of my activities, but certainly has enhanced my production and engagement. I’ve noticed that it has, in fact, made most things seem easier and less stressful because I’m thinking less about where I’d rather be or what I’d rather be doing. That’s not to say I’ve been focused enough to think this way in all my recent activities, but from what I can tell, it’s been quite helpful. My schoolwork seems to take less time; my football practices seem to end much more quickly; and weekends seem to have no effect at all in terms of perceptional time. It seems like a positive way of thinking, but it is too difficult to apply it to all the activities I perform.

In conclusion, my experience with time perception is roughly consistent with those of my peers. Fun times such as extended vacations seem to last very little amounts of time, while the more boring events in life like paperwork in school seem to take long periods of time. Negative events in my life also seem to take longer than usual. Time also is perceived to slow down when I am actively aware of the clock or am thinking about the passing of time. Finally, I have found that time perception can be manipulated if a certain mindset it used towards less enjoyable activities.

I have neither given nor received any unauthorized assistance on this assignment.______________________

Since the beginning of man there has always been a vague perception of the concept of time. What is that concept? Is it as measurable as we seem to make or is on such a different dimension that what we use to try and measure time with is inadequate in grasping time completely. It seems like every day I have an experience where time seems to be going by so quickly I don’t believe it is hour’s later and other times when it seems like minutes even seconds seem to be forever lasting. That is why I don’t think that time is so concrete that we can measure it with seconds and minutes I feel that time is significantly too complex to be able to be observed in this way. I believe that the experience of time is affected by a multitude of different variables two in particular memory and state of being.

In some of my experiences with time it seems to me that I perceive the rate at which time goes by differently depending on how my memory serves me. One way I think that this works is the better and more vivid my memory of past events the faster time seems to have gone by. I feel as though when I am able to vividly remember events that happened a bit of time ago it seems that the time since that memory has flown by me with no hesitation and that I arrive at the present moment more quickly than I could have imagined. One such example that pertains to this phenomenon of time passing happened to me a week ago when I was thinking back to my childhood when I was 6 or 7 and I could remember very vividly being at a family reunion at this park in Sacramento where my father lives. I can still remember very fine details about the day and when I thought back to it a week ago it made me feel as though 12 years of life has passed by in days. This feeling makes me perceive time as being shorter than what its documented as being. However, the same feeling can be in reverse to this the perception of time being extremely slow going given an event that happened days or hours ago feeling like they happened months ago. I have this feeling as well when it comes to things that in memory feel like a much longer time than what has actually occurred. I have a very recent experience with this just this morning at 5:30 am I drove my girlfriend to the airport so she can go back to Georgia. At this point it feels as though a month has gone by since I have seen her I feel like that is in part due to my memory making it seem as though it was a longer time than it actually was.

Complimentary to the idea that memory effects how we perceive time I also think that the state of being that one is in will influence how they might perceive how time is passing. By state of being I mean emotional and psychological state of being as well as physical state i.e. being angry, happy, stressed or drunk, under the influence of drugs etc. any number of things can affect your overall state. For example when I’m about to play in a game the hours in the locker room are longer for me. I focus more on details, my senses seem to heighten, and there is more time there than there is for an equal length of time on any other day. With my state of being at such an excited level time goes by as if I’m that guy from wanted whose adrenaline levels make him able to slow time to the point of frame by frame. In this first example each second is given more emphasis and so it seems like the moments happening are happening longer for what we measure them to be. A different take on this explanation of what effects time perception comes from that expression everyone has heard time flies when you’re having fun saying that when things are going well, we’re happy and having a great time, time has less emphasis and passes by us. One of my best examples of this and fondest memories is spending the week at the beach with my friends and girlfriend this past summer for beach week. Now in regular circumstances this week would be like any other week but since we were at the beach and having parties and having a great time this week seemed to have been condensed and shortened into just one day instead of seven. I think because of it being so fun and lighthearted time wasn’t perceived to be as long since every day was relaxed and the individual moments not as stressed time slipped away silently. There are of course other situations and examples of how time can be perceived differently according to what we are experiencing at the moment. I don’t have specific experiences to relate to it but sometimes when people are extremely angry things seems to happen so fast and something might happen that was an hour long but since they were angry it went by in moments. The last example of state of being that effects time perception but certainly not the least is when people are intoxicated with drugs or alcohol their perception of time has been proven to be effected by what they’re on.

My final thought about the subject of time perception is I think that how we perceive time is dependent entirely on our perspective and what we’re experiencing. I believe that there is a combination of the two fore mentioned variables that bring us to how we perceive time passing and since they are variable we cannot truly measure time through a uniform system that makes every unit equal. Through my experiences I have formed this idea that time is not as solid as we have made it rather its more liquid than once thought. I think that the only way to measure time is through our own perspective and what it feels like to us and not in such a concrete method as with a clock and units such as seconds and minutes.

“He was a wonderful person and what little time I did get to spend with him was a blessing. He was too young.”

“Life is too short. I miss you.”

Time influences every life and is a constant presence in life.  Every story if life relates to time, but in the past week, when I received this assignment, I was reminded of one of the worst characteristics of time:  Time is always fleeting and it can be scarce when you need it most.  This scarcity is found in many elements everyday.  I find scarcity in the time spent with the college decision, during field hockey, and with personal relationships. Through these experiences I have learned time is always elapsing and causing new unwanted endings in life.

I felt the pressure of the shortage of time when I had to pick a college.  I had years, then months, then weeks, then just days to make my decision.  Where did the time go?  It was as if it continued to fly around me and I just stood still trying to make such a difficult decision in my life.  But as my crucial time continued to deplete, I made a decision.  I would attend the University of Richmond the following fall.  It was not an easy choice to make and the pressure of the time crunch did not make it any easier.  Time is unyielding and this was one of the first situations when I realized just how difficult it could be to be in a situation where time can run out.  But I am glad that I made the decision and that this deadline pushed me toward it.  Other situations with little time have not faired so well in my life though.

The second instance that stands out in my memory of having little time occurred earlier in my senior year at the district field hockey championships.  For the second year in a row our team worked our hardest to make it to this game and all we had to do was beat one more team to make it to State.  It was the end of the second half and we were losing 1-0.  We had time left to win, but very little.  Each pass that was made or foul that occurred took up more of the precious time that we had remaining in the game.  Obviously, being in the game at this time I wasn’t thinking of the impact of time on my life, but looking back now, I think of this moment every time I think of how time has affected my life.  It came down to the last thirty seconds of the game and we had one last chance.  We got a corner off of the other team’s foul and set up with everyone and everything we had on the line.  One shot, two shots, three shots, and then cleared.  The whistle blew and we were out of the precious time that we needed so badly.  My team lost that day and that was my last game I played with that team.  Looking back I remember if we had just had a little more time, just one more minute we could have done it.  But we didn’t, time stops for nothing and is unyielding.  In this situation time was not on my side.

As stated in the introduction, this past week alone has reminded me of the scarce qualities of time that I have refenced in the stories above.  But the lack of time that I was referring to then is the worst kind of all.  The time that runs out when a life ends.  The quotes at the top of the page came from my Facebook and refer to a friend of mine from home that suddenly died from a preknown heart condition at the age of twenty this past week.  For him and for many others, the time of life ran out much too soon.  Not only did time run out for my friend and neighbor, Scott, but it also ran out for those of us around him to spend time with him.  Time for us was too short to get to be with and really know a great person like Scott.  He lived behind me for almost my entire life, and in that time I can think of a few instances when we interacted either in the neighborhood or at school, but to me that is not enough.  I wish that his time had not gone so fast and I could go back and get to know him better that I did.  Death, to me, is the ultimate proof of the fact that both time is too short and unyielding.  Other than the recent loss of Scott, I have also lost others in my life very close to me including all of my grandparents.  The little time that I got to spend with each of them is now in the form of just precious memories.  The time for us to spend together was so scarce, that my memories are few, and even nonexistent in some cases.  Like in making the decision, or in the game, time just ran out and it is precious time that I cannot get back again.

Yes, there are many positive aspects of time and organized time that have led to countless human advances.  But through my own life experiences, I have realized the negative effects that time, or lack of time, can have on our lives.  Time is continuously fleeting and we can never go back once it has passed.  We need to use to the fullest the time we are given.  We need to spend that time going over every detail of any life decision.  We need to work our hardest in that game so we feel we have nothing left when time has run out.  Most importantly, we need to make the best of the time that we have with those in our lives, for we never know when it may run out for good.

“Now next on the floor are the Cheerleaders from W.T. Woodson High School,” the announcers exclaimed. Then the crowd goes wild! Screaming fans and parents stand up, cheering and clapping as they wait to see their daughters perform the routine they worked four long months to perfect.  As soon as I hear the fans and our school name announced, my heart starts to beat like crazy.

I think to myself, “We are up next after this team.  We’re going in less than five minutes.  Relax, relax.”  The adrenaline is pumping into my blood and I can no longer hear myself think.  My divas, my teammates, my family huddles together in a group as our captains and coaches give us a couple last words of wisdom.

“You’ve all worked extremely hard these past four months.  It’s too late to fix anything now.  By now you’re bodies will remember the routine much better than your minds.  So Relax.  Take a deep breath and let out all the stress and worries and just let your bodies do what it needs to do.  Let your minds go blank.  It doesn’t matter whether we win or lose.  Just make this a performance that you won’t regret!” our coaches say to us.  And just like that, it’s time for my team to go out and perform.  I run out with my team to the dirty, blue mats lying dead center of the huge gymnasium.  I can see the fans cheering, but my mind numbs so I can’t hear them.

All of the sudden, the room gets so quiet; you could feel the tension in the air.

“Let’s go Divas!” yells my coach, then “five, six, seven, eight,” we start and my mind goes blank.

Now a year later, all I remember is what I remember watching in the videos.   I don’t remember how we did, what score we received, or even what routine goes with which competition and what year I performed each routine.  All I remember is the music.  And just like my coaches said, my body remembers.  My body remembers everything.  Even if only the first measure of a song is played on the radio, or I hear just a snippet of a song that was a part of my cheer routine, my body, not my mind, automatically starts counting, “one, two, three, four…” I stand there in a trance like state, going through the motions, stunts, and tumbling through my head and saying the cheer until I finish the four minute routine. I essentially go back in time, to the competition, to the hallway where my team and I waited until it was our turn to compete, to the practice rooms where we spent hour after hour working on our routines, and finally to the gymnasium, on that dirty, old, blue mat where my last memory of the routine lies.

My friends, the ones who’ve known me for years are all used to this part of me, the part of me that waits for someone to turn on a song that was used in my routine so that I could go on a mini time travel trip.  They are used to seeing me randomly performing my cheer routine, by myself, in the middle of a crowded room.  They get embarrassed sometimes and don’t completely understand, but I love that the music takes me back to that time; it takes me back to the smelly, old gym and the dance room where my team, my coaches, and I spend endless hours fixing, fixing, and fixing our routines till they were perfect and suitable to be performed in front of hundreds of fans.  The music allows me to relive all the pain, the misery, and the anger that cheering brought along with it, but it also fulfills me with a sense of pride and accomplishment, for though I spent hours and hours at practice, and then afterwards, I spend hours and hours at night working on school work, sacrifice sleep, I loved cheering and I love traveling back in time and reliving my cheering days by listening to music.

The most recent time trip I went on was here in Richmond.  I was at the gym working out with my friends, when we all decided to go relax and dance a little in the dance room.  There, we started dancing to the very popular Korean song Gangnam Style the singer Psy.  When we were all tired of listening to this song, my friend arbitrarily asked me to teach her how to do my cheer routines.  Of course I wasn’t able to teach her how to stunt and throw people into the air nor could I teach her how to do a round-off, back-hand-spring, and tucks, but I taught her how to do the next best thing.

“Five, six, seven, eight,” I said, and then I took a step out to the right and started slowly going through the motions of the dance with her.  As I went through the dance, step by step, I mentally relived being a cheerleader.  I saw the crowd cheering in front of me, I saw signs and parents with horns, whistles, and cow bells, and I was brought back to the dirty, blue mat lying in the center of the gymnasium floor.

In retrospect, my coach was right.  Two years ago, in the hallway outside of the gymnasium where my last cheer competition was held, it didn’t matter how many times I reminded myself to keep my legs together in a stunt or how many times I told myself to jump high when I tumbled; my body remembers better than my mind what it has practiced doing for the past four months.  And my body still remembers.  Every time I hear a song that was in my routine, I go back in time.  I remember the moves like I had just got out of practice.

One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, over and over and over again. The incessant beeping of the metronome kept us together and right on time. As the players coordinated their movements, their collective shapes evolved into remarkable arrangements. With the delicate hum of the low brass as a cue, the drumline erupted into a spontaneous feature, pounding out notes in commanding accord. Intricate fills of the bass drums established the framework for the cracks of the snares and the beats of the tenor drums. So much sound, so much precision, so much was going on at once. I was locked in to everyone around me. Our rhythms connected to form an outstanding sound as the beats of the drumline guided the band.

It’s a bit nerve-racking to imagine how easy it is to jumble up this accuracy into a sloppy mess. One slip of a finger, one wrong note, or one little mistake could ruin the entire performance. Playing a note even a fraction of a second offbeat could throw off everyone around you. This inconsistency then spreads throughout the band, leaving the performance a step behind where it was at the beginning, and where it could’ve been altogether.

Marching band is, to say the very least, arduous on one’s skills, patience, and capabilities. A performer is required to coordinate literally dozens of actions simultaneously, including anything from synchronizing steps to a complexity like maintaining an entirely apathetic facial expression. After years of practice, I am usually very calm and direct; I never have to worry about my stick alternations, stepping patterns, visuals, dynamics, or even the notes that I play. These necessities all seemed to fit into my muscle memory like a lock and key. Processing what seemed like hundreds of concurrent actions was no longer necessary for me to get and stay in the groove, but this time, it was different.

About halfway through our performance, the thought of making an error started to emanate in my thoughts. More and more I would be thinking about every move I made, trying to correct my choppiness to prevent an error by whatever means possible. Tighter and tighter I became until I reached the point where I had to mentally process every stroke of the stick. As the tension built, my mind was racing through this vicious cycle, amplifying my stress until I was trying to take control of every stick alternation, every step, and every move I made. It was truly unbearable to see my level of performance drop so drastically in such a short amount of time. Unfortunately, tightening up my stance and control was the last thing I should’ve done.

Right as the band broke into a captivating silence, I smashed on my drums just a beat too early. Immediately, all of the suspense, fluctuations in dynamics, beautiful harmonies, and all else that over a hundred individuals devoted their own time and efforts into, plunged into disorder. These players’ undeniable creativity, magnitudes of practice, unwavering determination, and so much more that they put into the performance were, in that instant, crushed. From that moment on, our performance was not where it had been. Dynamics unevenly fluctuated, timing was off, form slacked, and unity was virtually nonexistent. My single mistake showed me the extent to which a single error in timing can cause an enormity of obstacles.

When I think back to that moment, I probably came in roughly a third of a second too early. A third of a second. It still shocks me to this day that such a minimal mistake can evoke monumental consequences. What I find even more frightening is the fact that the band is not only vulnerable to me, but also to over a hundred other individual members. Each person has more or less an equal chance of making an error that can demolish everything the band has worked towards.

That day showed me that timing has a huge impact on our lives, especially when our lives involve music. Our specific genre, marching/orchestra music, places an even more extreme importance on the concept of time. This threat of time not only applies to music, of course, for all aspects of both life and existence are subject to time and therefore its many implications. After that episode, I learned that one mistake could result in our performance really never being the same. The band members’ attempt to always conform to each other had the undesired side effect of adapting to someone who has made a mistake. From that single point on, I have ensured that I am, and always will, stay right on time.

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