astrophysics and how we spend our time

I am delighted, this semester, to be the  'lab assistant' (read, T.A.) for Dr. Mary Pat Henehan's  Spirituality and Social Work class at Wash U.  Krista Tippett's book, Einstein's God, is one of the suggested readings and I recently finished the first chapter, an interview with Freeman Dyson, a theoretical astrophysicist and Paul Davies and astrophysicist.  Dyson is talking about black holes and says, "The black hole is the only place where space and time are really so mixed up that they behave in totally different ways.  I mean, you fall into a black hole and your space is converted into time and your time is converted into space."  Woah.   I don't know how much I get that, but I think it's really cool.

Believe it or not, I also think there is a practical application for life.  Jump with me now.  This is a strange jump:  Steve Jobs.  I would first like to say with no silliness or flippancy that I am sorry about his death and the grief of his family and friends.  I think he was inspiritational to many, many people. 

In reading about him the past couple of days, a feature of his leadership and personality that stands out to me is how very discerning and maybe even stingy he was with his time.  An article from today's NYT addresses this:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/technology/with-time-running-short-steve-jobs-managed-his-farewells.html?_r=1&hp 

Here is what a friend said, "Steve made choices,” Dr. Ornish said. “I once asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, ‘It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done.’ ”
“But for Steve, it was all about living life on his own terms and not wasting a moment with things he didn’t think were important. He was aware that his time on earth was limited. He wanted control of what he did with the choices that were left.”

The meaning of everyone's life is different, and our experiences of time may be slightly different - but the truth is we all have many demands on our time, pleas for our time, and distractions from ways we want to spend our time.  Sometimes we say yes to social occasions we don't really want to be part of, sometimes we let the computer or tv suck away unintended hours of our day, sometimes we put work first when we don't have to, sometimes we commit ourselves to 'causes' because we think we should but we really don't have the time in the first place.

A couple years ago I told my friends and family I was going to have the Year of No:  that I would say "no" to anything and everything I was asked to do outside family and work.  I didn't totally succeed, but I made improvements in discerning how I wanted to spend my time.  I prioritized.  I think Steve Jobs must have done that to the nth degree - he had a vision and ambition and a sense that time was fleeting. 

I can in no way speak to what kind of person Steve Jobs was, whether he was kind, compassionate, emotionally and mentally healthy...but I do like the idea of prioritizing one's time.  I think it leads to greater life satisfaction and feeling of being purposeful, rather than blown about by the needs and wants of organizations or people who don't necessarily have your best interest at heart. 

I also wonder, if we were clearer in choosing to spend our time on the things we say we value - what would that do to our sense of time?  Would time feel more expansive if our pace was slower or our attention more honed. 

This is where I can kind of sort of get physics on a gut level - time is relative - that makes sense to me.  So, here's to more deeply considering how we spend our time, learning to say no or yes (as the case may be), and accepting without fear that all these little moments will add up to what we call our life.