How slow days can become quick weeks

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Have you noticed how individual days have slowed down but weeks have sped up during The Lockdown™️? It appears paradoxical until you realize something amazing. There is actually two of you.

The first “you” is called the experiencing self. It’s you in the moment. Right now I’m sitting on my couch. The night sky slowly turns to lilac as the sun peaks over the horizon. My cat has arrived to make a nest of my lap.

I’m experiencing all of this in a very particular way. Warmth. Beauty. Thoughts. Words. It makes me feel a certain way. Right now I feel good. I’m quite happy.

In a few days I’ll look back and much of this moment will be lost though. It’s not that I have a terrible memory. Mine is about average. Realistically, the typical human brain just can’t store every detail. So the average memory is actually meant to be fuzzy and failable.

The mind ruthlessly discards the unnecessary and compresses the similar. All those typical weekday morning? Compressed into one! Just like a zip file on your computer is suddenly smaller, so has your slow days suddenly become quick weeks.

You‘re now looking back instead of experiencing. This is the second “you”, the remembering self. The paradox has come full circle. The calm is compressed and the detail discarded.