What Day Is It Today?

At some point, most of us have felt that sensation of temporary paralysis that produces the perception that the days are traced, one after another. With very little notion of time and without being part of it, letting ourselves be carried away by the routine and wondering strangely in some lucid moment: “what day is it today?” .

The days intermingle with each other, you don’t know if it is Monday or Wednesday, in which week of the month you are and all weekends are too similar, it is not that you have a special memory of any of them. When you look back, you have the feeling that a little and a long time has passed at once. You feel trapped in time and you don’t know how to get out of there.

You feel strange, confused, frustrated, and tired. Sometimes, only sometimes, this loss of temporal sense is accompanied by a loss of vital sense, more or less deep. You begin to ask yourself not only: “what day is it today?”, But also: “How did I end up like this?”, “Am I happy this way?” , “Do I want to live my life this way?”

The brain are the eyes that see time

Just as we need eyes to see the world around us, we need brains to make an account of the passage of time. The brain is the organ in charge of feeling how the seconds happen. However, the brain does not work outside the outside world and isolated, but it is nourished by everything that happens around us to do its job well. Our language, age, life history, previous learning, preferences, emotions and expectations also influence the perception of time.

Time slips out of our hands when we are enjoying what we are passionate about and what motivates us . An hour can turn into a second when we are vibrating in tandem with another person. However, a second can turn into hours while we wait for the results of an important test for our health.

The autopilot

Our brain never rests, even when we sleep, it continues to work. His work is exhausting, and as long as we are alive it will not end. However, our brain is a very efficient organ and tries to save energy by automating routine tasks.

When routine dominates us and what we face during the day is known to us, our head tends to activate automatic pilot mode. We pay less attention to what we do because our daily experiences are similar to those of previous days, full of familiar and repetitive tasks that we know how to do without much difficulty.

Think about what moments in your life have you felt that the day repeated itself over and over again without any variation. Perhaps a time when you spent less time on yourself and were immersed in a job that did not fill you enough. It may be that during confinement, where the leisure and activity options we had were very limited, you would also experience this feeling.

Now reflect on the times in your life that you remember most intensely. It may be your adolescence when you lived a lot of experiences in a very few years. If you have children, try to remember how you lived those first years of their life, full of changes and learning.

The impact of small changes

Doing the previous reflection you may have realized that there is something that alters the experience of time, and it is the changes and novelties that we face. When nothing changes and routine prevails, time becomes dense, doughy and repetitive. We go into autopilot mode and that is when our life begins to become the movie of Groundhog Day feeling that the days repeat themselves over and over again.

Introducing small changes or novelties in our daily chores can help us get out of that temporary stoppage. Having a chat with a loved one, going for a walk, having coffee, exercising, or sleeping away one night are small actions that can act as “temporary markers.”

Feeling that each day is different from the previous one, even if the changes are only subtle, and having the feeling that, at the same time, as time passes, we do something of value with it, is a key factor for people’s emotional and mental well-being. .