Time Standing Still

Excerpt from “Time,” Radiolab (February 25, 2005).

Robert Krulwich: And to you, I guess, the joy of time—the deepest most ecstatic version of it—is when you lose it completely.

Jay Griffiths: I think that’s absolutely right. And I think that’s something in prayer, in meditation, in art—and in love, actually— is that people lose that very fretful, ticking-off-sense of clock time. And what you fall into is something transcendent. All that you have to have done is loved somebody to know that. And to hold them for half an hour and you can know that half an hour has lasted an eternity.

Robert: Time standing still at a moment like that is like a really swollen now.

Jay: Yes! Exactly. Exactly. And that in a sense that’s when the moment meets the eternal. That is all that matters is just this moment that you’re holding in your hand.