Goines On: Time after time

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Goines tried to remember how long ago it was he’d concocted a theory why his battery-powered toothbrush seemed to beep its 30-second signals sooner early in the morning than it did at night. It must have been about a year ago he’d emailed a friend his conjecture that the difference had something to do with variations in the operating rate of whatever device a human brain uses to estimate the passage of time.
    His own brain’s estimator, anyway, seemed to operate more slowly in the morning than at night. The friend said yes, he too thought time estimation depended on our brain states. We need a while to make the transition from dreaming back to consciousness. A dream can seem minutes long even though only a few seconds have passed on the clock.
    So, when we brush our teeth before we are fully awake, we move the brush over our teeth more slowly than we think we do, and the 30-second beep for completing a quadrant of our mouth surprises us by how quickly it seems to come. Our perceived seconds take longer early in the morning than the clock’s seconds.
    Goines was startled by the thought that the abrupt cessation of perceived time when a person dies means that, for that person, the rest of “forever” will pass...in no time at all.

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