The Abstract Concept
Speech No. 5 in the Toastmasters "Speaking to Inform"
Manual
Presented February, 2000
The objectives of this speech were:
- To research and organise the thoughts of experts on an abstract concept, theory,
historical force,or social/political issue.
- To present the ideas in a clear and interesting manner.
Time 10 to 12 minutes.
When All your Christmases Come at Once
Do you realise…. It's only 313 days till Christmas? I'm just warning you because Christmas has been
coming earlier each year and catches most of us unprepared.
It wasn't always like that, was it? Remember when we were kids - it took a whole year from one Christmas
to the next. It seemed to take forever!
But now - We just get over one Christmas and the next one begins to loom.
Why do the years of our childhood seem to stretch out and remain vivid in our memory?
And why, when we are older, do the years rush by and blur together?
And more importantly - how can we slow down the passage of years and make the most of them?
We all know that "Time flies when you are having fun." A 10-minute coffee break seems much shorter than
a 10-minute wait for the bus.
An hour of absorbing entertainment doesn't take long but a boring lecture can make an hour seem like an
eternity.
I remember waiting with my mother once in the Outpatients Department of the hospital. The morning
dragged on endlessly. A woman wandered in, weighed herself on the scales by the door, and then left. A
little later, the same woman reappeared, stepped onto the scales and weighed herself again. My mother
turned to me in astonishment and whispered "We haven't been here that long. Have we?"
Passive activities appear to take longer than those requiring active participation. For instance time
passes faster for the student taking notes than for one who passively listens.
Geoffrey Godbey, professor of leisure studies at Pennsylvania State University notes that "you can beat
time by being unaware of it."
Psychologists call this unawareness of time "flow" Godbey describes flow as "situations in which people
have focussed their field of concentration and totally given themselves to an activity"
Not surprisingly, these activities are usually things people love to do. Such as playing sport, watching
a good movie - or attending a Toastmasters meeting.
Our level of motivation can influence our awareness of time passing. The more motivated we are to a
task, the less time it appears to take. Lack of motivation tends to interrupt attention to our task. The
more we notice change during an interval, the longer we judge it to be.
You've probably had the experience of travelling somewhere you have never been before. The unfamiliar
scenery and the anticipation of your arrival seem to make the trip last a long time. But the return trip
over the same route seems to take far less time.
Psychologists have noted that larger units of time - such as months or years appear to pass more rapidly
as we age. One theory why it occurs has to do with simple mathematics: a year to a 5-yr-old is 20% of
her lifetime, whereas to someone who's 50, it's a mere 2%. Thus a year seems much longer to a child than
to an adult.
Another reason why the days of our youth are so full and long is that these are the days of learning and
discovery. We remember these times much as we would recall a time spent in interesting travel with a
multitude of new experiences.
But as we grow older, some of these experiences become automatic routine which we hardly take note of.
The days and weeks slip by like identical beads on a string.
According to John Wearden, a psychologist at the University of Manchester, "What the brain is probably
reacting to are differences in the energy of stimulus, rather than the duration."
In other words, the more our brain is stimulated by an event, the more likely we are to remember that it
happened. If we can't remember anything happening in a given time period, it's as though that time
never existed. Something like when we are asleep - our brains are not recording any new memories, and
the hours we spend in sleep seem no more than a few minutes.
Our memory of how many events that occurred in a given time period determines how long we judge that
period to be. Psychological studies show that our memories tend to shrink empty minutes, hours and days
while magnifying action-packed ones. In other words, time might seem to drag when we're bored, but our
memories record just the opposite impression.
Wearden believes this helps to explain why landmark events such as Christmas seem to come round faster
each year. "As you get older", he says, "things seem more routine-so you find yourself thinking 'It's
only event 17 500 of the year and yet already it's Christmas. Normally, I should be on event 25 000 by
now.'"
In Joseph Heller's novel, "Catch 22" Dunbar wanted to live longer, so he chose to do the things that he
hated, knowing that this would make the time pass slowly.
This might have might made his days seem long and tedious, but in retrospect, his memory probably would
have turned them into a meaningless blur and he would feel as though he had hardly lived.
There has to be a better way to slow down the passage of time.
In the movie "A Thousand Clowns" character Murray Burns says, "You gotta own your own days, and name
them, or else the years go by and none of them belong to you."
If each day is the same as the one before, it's hard to even remember what day of the week it is. The
days all blur together and looking back over the years, there is nothing to trigger any memories in the
brain. If we couldn't remember anything, it would be as though we had never lived.
The way to claim the days as your own and add them to your memory bank is to embrace each moment and
become totally involved in it. If your mind is fully active and totally immersed in the present, your
memory is far more likely to preserve the moment.
Try to make each day as individual as your fingerprints. Structure and routine makes time slip by
unnoticed, so find ways to break the routine of your day. Try taking a different route to work
occasionally.
Walk around your neighbour hood. It will enlarge the picture of it that you hold in your mind. Meet new
people.
Writing about your experiences is another way to make them really belong to you. Keeping a diary is an
excellent way of keeping the days separate. Your mind is more receptive when stimulated by a new
challenge. Look for new experiences and challenges every day. Learning need not end with our
schooldays. Take a course in something you are interested in. Read about stimulating subjects, but
don't let it end there - discuss your ideas with friends. Ideas and conversations add to your store of
life memories just as much as exciting experiences.
Read voraciously. Experience fully. Ask questions. Absorb, interact, reflect. Savour each moment.
You will find that time really does fly when you are having fun, but when Christmas comes around again,
you will look back and say, "What a wonderful long eventful year!"
COMMENTS
The first part of this speech doesn't flow as logically as the latter part, and I felt
restricted because I needed to use notes. However, everyone seemed to find the topic interesting and
quite a few Toastmasters commented later, "So that's why......."