Time Dilation

I’ve decided that I should probably start scheduling an existential crisis for the end of every August. It seems to hit me at about the same time each year anyway, so I might as well put it on the calendar.

Late August has a way of making time feel especially visible (perhaps it's my impending September birthday).

Kids change daily. Their clothes seem to shrink overnight. Their shoes constantly need to be replaced. Their interests, language, abilities, and understanding of the world change almost by the minute. We can see that change happening. We can feel it. It’s incredibly palpable.

Once we become adults, the changes are usually more fractional. Of course, we can still learn new things. We can change our hair, develop new interests, move, change careers, and completely redirect our lives. But it’s different.

By adulthood, we generally know most of what we need to know to survive and function. Once we’ve reached a certain level of independence, we’re mostly expected to maintain it. Wake up, do the things, keep everything running, and repeat.

Eventually, some of the novelty of simply being alive begins to wear off.

There are things we can do to bring novelty back into our lives, but adaptation is inevitable. Things that once required our complete attention eventually become automatic. Days become routines, routines become years, and somehow another August arrives.

I think of part of this is “awe fatigue.” It’s similar to the "hedonic treadmill": even when something is wonderful, we eventually adapt to it. We simply cannot remain in a sustained state of amazement over everything in our lives. What once felt extraordinary gradually becomes familiar—not because it is any less valuable, but because familiarity is what our brains do.

That doesn’t mean we’re ungrateful. It doesn’t mean we’ve stopped loving our children, our dogs, our homes, or the lives we’ve worked hard to build. It means awe is difficult to sustain when we’re surrounded by the same beautiful things every day. We adapt so we can continue functioning.

Life with children is different because there is so much novelty. They’re experiencing the world for the first time, and we get to experience some of it again through them. I think that’s part of why people love being around children. They remind us that life is bigger than our routines. They give us another opportunity to notice things we’ve stopped noticing.

So how do we hold on to some of that? How do we keep life from becoming entirely automatic?

We can learn new things. We can take up new hobbies. We can deliberately put ourselves in situations that require us to be present again.

And this is where dogs come in for me.

Children can certainly pick up hobbies, and we can choose to learn alongside them. But with dogs, nearly everything is a team sport.

When I say “team sport,” your mind may immediately go to agility, dock diving, protection sports, GRC, or any of the countless other dog sports available. But I’m talking about something much broader than that.

I’m talking about learning something new with or about your dog.

Your dog needs your participation. The things we intentionally teach them generally aren’t things they can learn incidentally or pursue entirely on their own. They need us to create the conversation, help them understand the problem, and guide them toward the answer.

That’s one of the most beautiful things about dogs. Their learning is largely an expression of their desire to interact with us. They try to solve the problems we place in front of them because participating with us gives them a sense of purpose.

As I’ve moved away from dog sports and toward connecting with my own dog on what feels, to me, like a more meaningful level, I’ve noticed that what lights him up most is simply spending time together—talking, communicating, and having new conversations.

Those conversations don’t have to be loud or impressive. They can be quiet. They can be simple. They can be fleeting.

They may come from refining our foundations and fundamentals. They may come from asking for slightly more duration, improving clarity around a familiar skill, moving together through a new environment, noticing his comfort levels and responding accordingly, or noticing that something about our communication isn’t quite landing and trying another way.

It doesn’t have to take a tremendous amount of time. It’s about intentional time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about time dilation—ever since Interstellar, I’ve been obsessed with this phenomenon—and one of life’s biggest questions: How do we slow time down? How do we get more of it?

We can’t create more time. But I do think we can change the way we experience it.

I’ve been reading about Einstein’s theories of relativity and the two circumstances under which time can actually dilate: relative velocity and gravitational pull. I understand that these concepts mean something very specific when we’re discussing physics and space. But here on Earth, I’ve been interpreting them in my own way (which coincidentally would contradict the theory as it applies in space).

I think of gravitational pull as grounding.

What pulls us out of the constant mental movement between what already happened and what needs to happen next? What brings us back into our bodies, into our relationships, and into the present moment?

Think about how grounding a static exercise can be. Hold a wall squat or a plank and tell me time doesn’t dilate. Thirty seconds can feel endless because there is nowhere else for your attention to go. You are fully inside your body and fully inside that moment.

So, in that sense, it is absolutely possible to slow time down—not by creating more of it, but by being present enough to experience all of it.

For me, gratitude is also part of that gravitational pull. So is working with my dog. Both require me to stop moving through life automatically and actually notice what is happening in front of me.

But this is also where awe fatigue matters. Gratitude doesn’t require us to be perpetually overwhelmed by how beautiful or meaningful something is. It asks us to pause long enough to notice it again. Awe may not happen automatically once something has become familiar. Sometimes we have to intentionally return our attention to what has been there all along.

That intentionality is the most difficult part. It takes effort to interrupt our momentum, ground ourselves, and stay with a moment instead of mentally rushing toward whatever comes next. But when we’re willing to do that, time really does seem to expand.

I think of relative velocity as the pace at which we move through our lives.

We cannot stop time, but we can change our speed. When we rush from one responsibility to the next, our experiences blur together. We may be doing more, but we aren’t necessarily registering more. Nothing receives enough of our attention to become distinct.

Intentional experiences create a change in pace. They interrupt the blur. They give time shape and texture.

That experience doesn’t have to be dramatic. It might be attending a Community Night, Pack Walk, or Pack Hangout. It might mean bringing your dog into a new environment, revisiting a skill you’ve neglected, or attempting something slightly outside your comfort zone.

Even if you aren’t particularly social, choosing to attend something new can still be a challenge you and your dog take on together. You come out the other side realizing: That wasn’t so bad. We learned something. We handled it together.

I’m currently taking several courses (all canine related, of course), including one that is centered more on the human side of the relationship. Dogs are often capable of making profound progress—sometimes much more readily than humans are. One of the greatest hurdles for people is ego.

But another major piece is regulation.

I want to understand more about how our nervous systems affect our dogs, how their nervous systems affect ours, and how those systems become intertwined. How can we become more aware of that ongoing exchange? How can we communicate more intentionally instead of continually reacting to one another?

Maybe we cannot create more time. But we can become more present inside the time we have.

Maybe slowing time down has less to do with finding additional hours and more to do with being intentional enough to notice what has become familiar—and creating moments substantial enough to feel.

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So this week, I encourage you to find one new thing you can do with your dog for literally two minutes.

It doesn’t need to be an entirely new activity. It could be changing the way you do something you already do: taking a different route outside, asking a familiar question in a new environment, practicing stillness together, or creating a tiny new ritual.

Interrupt one automatic behavior. Replace it with two minutes of intention, curiosity, and communication.

Two minutes may not sound substantial—but when you’re fully present inside them, they can feel like much more.