Do you know how to stop time?

Stop looking at it.Turn away from clocks. Don't wear a watch. I wore a watch everyday for 38 years teaching in a public school where everything we did was scheduled to an exact minute.A student would come up to me and say, "Mr. Strack, do you know what time it is?"Knowing the motive for the question, I would look down at my wrist with this reply. "What time do you want it to be?"Every other living creature lives its life without an awareness of numbers that reduce the quality of their experiences. Only humans are pulled from their noses by timepieces.Imagine if we could get up in the morning with the sunrise, acknowledge midday when the bright light is directly overhead and observe nightfall when the horizon swallows up the last golden ray. That would be less stressful than needing to know that it's 20 minutes past whenever.When we work, "deadlines" often grab us by the throat. Newspaper editor Arianna Huffington explains that the word, "deadline" was first used inside Civil War prison camps when prisoners were told they would be shot if they walked past a designated perimeter boundary.She points out that the definition of the word today isn't too far from its origin because our job executioner awaits us if we go past a prescribed time limit to complete an assigned task. Ironically, freedom from deadlines can result in better performance along with a more desirable outcome because we focus on the task rather than the time.Anne-Laure Sellier, professor of marketing at a business school in Paris, says that constant awareness of clock based time makes us less productive, less creative, less happy, and can have serious negative effects on our health and well being."Time is the most powerful influence on everything we do," Sellier says. "For us to expand our sense of time, we need to get off the clock."There's a paradox here. The busier we are, or making good use of our time, the quicker the hours go by.But then we get older and wonder how did our children grow up so fast or it just seemed like yesterday that we were 40 years old and now we're 50.We can train our minds to pay attention more and to slow our experiences down. Don't rush through Friday night pizza with the family. Talk about the movie the family watched on TV rather than shut it off as soon as the credits appear because we have to move on to the next scheduled thing. Stretch enjoyable moments when we visit with friends.Don't use excuses like we have to leave now because it's time to let the dogs out or it's getting late, and we have to get home to go to bed because there's work tomorrow.Invigorate. Appreciate. Define life by moments, not minutes. Research proves that when people are on their deathbeds, their biggest complaint was they didn't spend enough time doing what pleased them. Leave the dishes in the sink. Say no to overtime. Play catch. Go fishing. Take a walk with your spouse. Laugh more and love more.I think about a friend who irritates me because he arrives late to an event where I have been waiting for him. Unaware of the time, he greets me with a relaxed smile. I want to say, "Why are you so late? I thought you'd be here by now."Now I understand why he lives with less. Remember the expression that time waits for no man? This is not necessarily true. It actually stops on Nov. 1 when we turn the clocks back. Don't wait until 2 a.m.When it's 6 p.m. tonight, just think it will still be 6 p.m. one hour later. Time will seem to stop. Enjoy this special gift because next spring you will have to give the hour back.Although the dials and digitals count up to midnight, each passing day subtracts another breath from our lives, and when it comes to our final seconds, there may actually be a sigh of relief because we won't need clocks and watches anymore.