Have you heard of Gravitational Time Dilation?

It’s my birthday,  I am traveling (currently in Madrid) and one of the gifts I want to give myself is more time for writing … we’ll see how I do prioritizing this luxury.

Time, birthdays, travel, aging… uff!

Have you heard of gravitational time dilation?

When I first moved to Mexico, 20 years ago, I was living in a small village, learning the language, ‘roughing’ it with no electricity and experiencing a life that was very different from the way I was raised. When I would travel back to Canada I would l have the feeling of being on the outside of things, like I were watching life around me instead of engaging with it. I thought it was the change in amenities- things that now seemed so inconsequential like whether my peanut butter was crunchy or smooth or if someone was a bit late.  I haven’t had that feeling in a while – I figured I had grown accustomed to traveling between worlds.

This trip is my first time out of Mexico in almost a year. For the first time in ages I find myself slightly on the outside of things. There are SO many people! Plus, they are all moving about twice as fast as me, talking twice as fast and many are upset.  I was scolded almost as soon as I got off the plane by airport security for taking a photo of the airport. This is the effect of Mexico; I am slower, more aware and have built up a tolerance for withstanding things not going the way I expect them to.

My best friend talks about her soul catching up to her body when she travels a long distance. The urban dictionary calls this ‘soul ‘delay’.  It is a concept that gets attributed to African tribes or native Americans who would stop on a journey to let their souls catch up. Whether this is true or not I don’t know. What I do know is that there is a feeling that occurs when we move a vast distance at a great speed.  I find myself having to emerge back into the world- from where I don’t know.

In 1971, scientists Hafele and Keating flew celsium beam atomic clocks around the world twice on commercial airline flights- once going East and once going West. The clocks that traveled the world read different times compared to the clocks that stayed on the ground. This is because of the theory of gravitational time dilation.  The weaker the gravitational potential (the farther the clock is from the source of gravitation), the faster time passes. Well, if that is what happens to a clock, imagine the complexity of the human soul!

Thanks for reading

Jane