By Tommy Angelo
Play poker in a professional manner changed my perception of time. The bumpy road has now become a road paved for a more comfortable route.
Here is a nice word: cathemeral. This Word completes a trio of biological order. The day active animals are nocturnal. The night-active animals are diurnal. Animals that do not have a cycle of 24 hours are said cathemerals. An animal that does not eat and not sleeping at the same time is cathemeral. This is me.
My friend Alex is cathemeral. We need to constantly redefine yesterday, today and tomorrow to be mixed. Instead of using arbitrary midnight to mark the beginning of our days, we use our sleep cycles. For me, yesterday is the time before my last sleep, today is the period between now and the next time where I go to sleep, tomorrow is the next time I'm going to wake me up.
Alex and I are talking about another time scale. Say that it is 6h00AM a Tuesday morning and that Alex left the casino to go to sleep while I meet to go play. If I tell him: "Always ready for golf tomorrow?", this will not mean that Wednesday. This means "we go play golf when you réveilleras te' which will lead us to Thursday. In this example, my today is tomorrow. Einstein would agree with us on our way to calculate the time because our points of reference are both valid. We never miss a game of golf.
A passage from the play of The Who is true in my case: "Tommy doesn't know what day it is." And not just today. I often lose track of the weeks and months. But not the years. I had never lost the concept of the years prior to this year.
During my school years, I was a star in mathematics. Well look at this. I take 2000 and I subtract 1958 (my birth year) and I get 42.
These numbers 42 and 2000 are in my mind. So, when 2001 began, I had 43. Which means that I was going to have 43 during 2001. But somewhere, because of the time that passes, I have changed my party d August to January without even realizing it.
I did this in June 2001. I bought a ticket for a concert in August. The date of the concert was the same as my birthday which made me think, wow, I have 43 and I'll soon have 44. But wait, I can not have 44 years in 2001 because 44 + 1958 gives 2002. Duh!
I thus had to win one year at the moment. I had free time like that, in an instant. I came to win a whole year. It's like finding again the money we had forgotten.
But when you think about this, it makes no sense that I'm happy to have mixed the years. After all, I spend the time that I have to live and thats it. Think I have 42 or 43 will not prevent the planet from turning. Is it so important?
How we calculate the time we is useful insofar as it is significant for us and it shows us the passing time. My age is only an illusion. So why was I so happy?
The pleasure comes from the fact that I imagined having more time.
When we think about what belongs to us, we immediately think of money and possessions. But the only thing that is really up to us and who can we be removed is our time. Nothing is more precious. And more my appreciation of time increases, more time spent with people is important.
'Live the present moment' is an ideal for me. When I was a diurnal animal, I woke up some time and wanted to organize everything according to schedules. Live day by day was a dream on a shelf.
And I then started to play poker full time to become a cathemeral for several years. Effortlessly, I started to concentrate more on the present. And I have an idea why. My former lifestyle had hours, days and weeks. My new lifestyle did not. Is to mark the hours and the days that distracted me from the present moment, regardless of the day it was.
