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On Mar 31, 2014 Dan Duncan wrote on Should We Spend Time Like Money?, by Stefan Klein:

From 1979 until 1985 I was engaged day and night in the process of learning about computers until in 1981 I landed a position as a founder in a computer startup. For nearly 4 years then, until 1985 ,I worked on average 60 hours or more a week, sleeping under my desk when too tired to drive 40 miles to my apartment. I was working and learning at a furious rate. Many of my relationships evaporated and I was too engaged to care. I even ignored an invitation to be taken to Europe by a girlfriend, who then also disappeared. When the startup was purchased and I was suddenly out of work, after the initial reorientation, I realized that the previous 5 years had had more actual time and experience than the previous 20. What began to make sense of this perception was an episode on Carl Sagan's series Cosmos, in which he explored the warping of time as one approaches the speed of light. I figured that my brain was processing information at an increased rate and so had actually experienced more. Then I understood that what Richard Eberhart had written was not a dream but a description of fact, and an invitation.If I Could Only Live at the Pitch That is Near Madnessby Richard Eberhart (1904 – 2005) If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness When everything is as it was in my childhood Violent, vivid, and of infinite possibility: That the sun and the moon broke over my head. Then I cast time out of the trees and fields, Then I stood immaculate in the Ego; Then I eyed the world with all delight, Reality was the perfection of my sight. And time has big handles on the hands, Fields and trees a way of being themselves. I saw battal... [View Full Comment]

From 1979 until 1985 I was engaged day and night in the process of learning about computers until in 1981 I landed a position as a founder in a computer startup. For nearly 4 years then, until 1985 ,I worked on average 60 hours or more a week, sleeping under my desk when too tired to drive 40 miles to my apartment. I was working and learning at a furious rate. Many of my relationships evaporated and I was too engaged to care. I even ignored an invitation to be taken to Europe by a girlfriend, who then also disappeared.

When the startup was purchased and I was suddenly out of work, after the initial reorientation, I realized that the previous 5 years had had more actual time and experience than the previous 20. What began to make sense of this perception was an episode on Carl Sagan's series Cosmos, in which he explored the warping of time as one approaches the speed of light.

I figured that my brain was processing information at an increased rate and so had actually experienced more.

Then I understood that what Richard Eberhart had written was not a dream but a description of fact, and an invitation.

If I Could Only Live at the Pitch That is Near Madness
by Richard Eberhart (1904 – 2005)

If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness
When everything is as it was in my childhood
Violent, vivid, and of infinite possibility:
That the sun and the moon broke over my head.

Then I cast time out of the trees and fields,
Then I stood immaculate in the Ego;
Then I eyed the world with all delight,
Reality was the perfection of my sight.

And time has big handles on the hands,
Fields and trees a way of being themselves.
I saw battalions of the race of mankind
Standing stolid, demanding a moral answer.

I gave the moral answer and I died
And into a realm of complexity came
Where nothing is possible but necessity
And the truth waiting there like a red babe.

=============
Thanks for reconnecting me with this life-giving thread.

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On Jun 15, 2013 Daniel Dunan wrote on We Move in Infinite Space, by Rainer Maria Rilke:

A comment on a comment:

The word "experience," so often used as a catch-all for daily phenomena, has an interesting source, which brings me up short whenever I hear it or, occasionally, use it:

"ex" = from, out of
perieri = peril, danger

"Experience" then, encapsulates that which is derived from, or is the fruit of, danger, peril.