Take time to life

Perceptions of Time

Time could be classified into nine categories, biological time, personal time, physical time, metaphysical time, micro time, sync time, sacred time, profane time, and meta time.

1. Jet lag is the result of one’s biological time being out of kilter.

2. Personal time is subjective: 5 minutes doing something one enjoys feels quite different from 5 minutes of boredom.

3. Physical time is cyclical: day and

night, the seasons, and the waxing and waning of the moon.

Physical time is often more important for people in rural areas, whose lives are entwined with the natural environment, than for people in large cities.

4. Metaphysical time includes the experience of déjà vu or the recall of a former life.

5. Micro time refers to the time frame that a particular culture tends to see as a norm, with big differences between what Hall calls polychronic and monochronic cultures.

People in polychronic cultures, for example, much of Latin America or the Middle East, tend to have flexible schedules, move in rhythm to nature, and do several things (poly) at the same time (chronic). People in monochronic cultures, like the United States or northern Europe, have tighter schedules with only one thing (mono) planned for one time (chronic). Punctuality, or being on

time, is quite important in monochronic cultures. If a train in Japan is 5 minutes late, an announcement of apology can be heard; if a train is more than 30 minutes late, it will make the TV news on a slow-news day.

6. Sync time refers to the fundamental rhythm of interactions that calls the dance of life.

7. The myths of creation in different cultures

or religions as well as the people taking part in sacred ceremonies are connected to sacred time.

8. The hours of work, play, or sleep; the days arbitrarily called Monday or

the 17th; and the months or years of the calendar are units of profane time.

9. meta time, refers to attempts to use the language of ideas to describe a certain kind of human consciousness, to show that time can be perceived or used in many different ways.