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Jesse on Time
Hello everyone -Now that I have written out the emails of those people who are not receiving the Peacheylist emails, let me make a suggestion. If you are using Outlook and say Reply to All (instead of Reply) when you respond to this message, those people will receive the email (they only fail to receive it when it is sent directly from the Peacheylist). Alternatively, you can copy these email addresses into the To or CC field of your email, adding them to the list of people to get your email, and they will also receive your email. There are probably parallel options for other email programs. There are, after all, some pretty important people on the list of Peacheylist-less people!Even if you don't share my enthusiasm for flowtime (for example, someone said to me today 'All this talk of flowtime is such a waste of time'), the experience of developing this concept has led me to have some pretty interesting experiences with respect to time. For example, for the past year, I have consciously refrained from wearing a watch, in hopes of developing a better "sense of time." I thought that perhaps my watch is a crutch, much as a calculator is a crutch for people who are unable to add or subtract in their head. This has led me to rely on clocks wherever I could find them to determine the time. I feel that this experiment has worked. However, today I decided to start wearing a watch again, so that  I could more easily translate the current time into flowtime.Being chronically late for appointments, I used to set my watch from 5 to 10 minutes ahead of the real time, thinking that this would give me some buffertime in making appointments. Invariably, I would read the time off my watch, say 5:15, but then think "But of course, it's really only 5:05." I also had the digital clock in my apartment set 4 minutes fast. As a result, everytime I would look at a clock or watch, I would do a mental doubletake, figuring out if I had to subtract any time to get the "correct" time.Then I discovered the atomic clock synchronization program (there is a link to this at http://www.flowresearch.com/Flowtime/flowtime.htm). Since I have three computers at my desk, I began by copying this software to all three computers. Now, all of a sudden, my computer clocks all agree, and they are all exactly right (by conventional time). Now I have gone through and set all the clocks in my office, apartment, and car, and also my watch, to agree with these atomic-inspired computer clocks. Now when I look at a clock or watch that I own, at least, I no longer have to think "But of course it's really time so and so," since they all pretty much agree. This won't last forever, since my watch gains time, but it can be readjusted. When doing research on time, I found that it was the invention of the mechanical clock in the 1300s that made it possible to have these horribly precise hours and minutes that we are forced to live by. In reality, our experience and life is continuous, while our time is divided up into cookie-cutter type segments called hours. I think that people like me, who are perpetually late for appointments, are to some extent reacting to the purely arbitrary nature of mechanical time. I think it is very artificial to be so governed by the clock, which seems to determine when we wake up, when we sleep, and also when we eat lunch. It is sad but true that our mechanized society has driven us to such a state that is so unlike the natural rhythm of life -- which would involve sleeping till we wake up naturally, eating when we are hungry as opposed to at noon, and quitting work precisely at 5:00 no matter what we're doing (I would have really enjoyed life on the farm!). While clocks do contribute to the ability of people to meet each other, and to carry on a social life, they also have this negative side that most people seem to either be unaware of or to take for granted.I think that what we have to realize is that our time is a purely man-made invention, and that the only "natural" time is the time of the rising and setting of the sun and moon, and the seasons. I encourage you to think about what it would be like to live less by the clock and more by your own natural rhythms, and the the rhythms of nature. Yours in flowtime,Jesse

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