Experiencing Reality Just as the Rest of Nature Does

As a boy, the closer it got to Christmas, the slower the days would pass. We would say, "I can't wait!" barely able to contain the anticipation, but wait we did, finally awaking on the day of magic and presents.My wife Jennifer and I recently spent a weekend in a place that is a two-and-a-half hour drive from our home. The 2.5 hours getting there seemed interminable, while the trip home, despite taking the exact same time on our clocks, just flew by.Clock time and lived time are two different things. In his novel The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann writes of the difference between time lived upright and active (vertical time) as opposed to time lived simply lying about (horizontal time). When we're fully engaged in life, lived time tends to pass in the blink of an eye, yet upon reflection it, when we consider all that we've done, that same time feels long. On the other hand, life lived in the horizontal (like spending months in bed in a sanatorium as Mann's character Hans Castorp does in…