Relativistic Speed
source: https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/1331204561789337604
I came across this video on Twitter (now X) the other day (dating back to February 14th, 2020). At first, I only looked at it because I like trains. I assume that everybody likes them(The tweet itself was liked 68K as of December 1st, 2020). The feeling of gliding through landscapes is among a few moments of “god-like” behavior. But after a few seconds, the video turned into something that I couldn’t stop watching. The main goal of the video is to demonstrate the difference in perceived speed. As your frame of reference narrows down, so does the speed you see. This can be discussed in the realm of physics, dynamics of movement and velocity, and of course optics. The cinematography world took it by heart as a demonstration on how a wide-angle lens is the best to emphasize speed. I myself have experience with that.
While shooting documentaries with cyclists, I would zoom into their feet pedaling, seeing how fast they are. But when I would sit down to edit I would realize that the impact I wanted to give was not there at all, instead, all those lousy wide shots I did with at least half of the effort on framing ended up being the most dramatic, most arousing ones.
Apart from the technicality of this, the reason why I had to watch that video over and over again was to understand its implications on perceived lifespans. I sometimes do this thing where I try to create a bullet point summary of my life, with its milestone events. I know that I haven’t lived a long life, I try my best to take this task seriously but I find it funny when I can narrow it down to 10–15 major events.
Okay as of this moment, I am 24 years 7 months 9 days 17 hrs 14 mins 36 secs old. Which can also be expressed as 295 months or 1,284 weeks or 8,988 days. The clock is ticking. And apart from deadlines, I feel like every day is quite long. I’m a hyperactive person so I always find ways to spend time, and not waking up later than 7 am whether I like it or not helps with having more waking hours in my hand but still, the realization of the effect of this difference in scope has amazed me. Maybe more than it should have.
By now, I know that everyone has an elderly (most times the grandparent) in the family who constantly says “Life runs through your hands like grains of sand” which is the closest metaphor to what I experienced in the video. This can be generalized to
out-of-body experiences (my wild dreams)
thought experiments of looking at the world from space and seeing it spinning
Staring at the water boiler when you desperately need that tea.
This text was written in order to get over my writer’s block. I am perfectly aware that it cannot be counted as an essay.