Contact

There's a phenomenon that I've discovered in the short time I've spent on this Earth, and in the even shorter time I've spent in intimate contact with another person. It's almost like a superpower that we as humans have little to no control over. This phenomenon is, in a sense, the slowing of time. The slowing of time during human contact.

I'm not talking about any old kind of human contact; not bumping into someone on the street, getting your change back after paying a cashier, a simple handshake. The contact that we receive from someone with whom we share an electricity, a connection. Someone you're crushing on, someone you love perhaps, but someone whose affections perhaps have not yet been reciprocated. I'm mainly talking about that first contact.

There was a girl that I liked a lot some time ago. I knew she felt the same way; she had told me. We just hadn't sealed the deal. Our first contact was hand holding, but this is where the phenomenon came into play. We were sitting side by side, and far too close for anyone to assume that there was anything less than an infatuation between us. Her hand was on her knee, my hand was on mine, and our knees were against one another. I reached over and my finger brushed the back of her hand and in this moment, time slowed.

The world was reduced to a crawl, like a whirling CD that had been turned to a vinyl record turning so much slower but producing the same sound, the same result. Time slowed, but not in any substantial way. Just for me and her.

Well, maybe just for me. I didn't ask.

But for me, every tiny, insubstantial, imperceptable movement became as clear as a muscle spasm to me. The twitch of her pinkie as she hesitated to receive my hand, the gentle brushing of her thumb against my wrist—it was all so clear, and it all lasted a lifetime.

The same phenomenon occurred the first time I kissed her. The friction of her cheek against mine was like pure electricity as she moved away from me just a fraction so that my lips could reach hers. The way they too twitched in her hesitance. The sensation of her hand against my chest. The feeling of her tongue—everything lasted an eternity.

This makes me wonder about love. Does love have some kind of reality-altering effect? Is it in tune with the rest of the universe, granting us just a little more time than our fragile human lives can provide when we're with the person that can pluck rather than tug our heartstrings and play a symphony beautiful enough to reduce us to tears? Or is it simply the endorphins, chemical reactions in the brain that form the illusion of time slowing? I prefer to believe the former, but then, who wouldn't?

Something magical, something that can't be explained, something higher than human beings always fascinates us, because we as a species, although would suggest the contrary, do not want to know everything. Sure, scientists can claim that all they seek is knowledge and truth, and fair play to them, but as individuals, I'm certain that their hearts are no different to yours or mine. There are things that they don't want to know. There are things that shouldn't be known, because if there is nothing left to discover, if there is even no hope for something left to discover, then what is there left? If we know everything, then why experience anything?

So knowing everything is not the goal, but the act of learning itself is the goal. That's why, perhaps, this phenomenon occurs on that first human contact. Because we want to learn about this person whose hand we're holding, whose lips we're kissing. For example, I learned that that girl was nervous, and she was hesitant, and in learning that, I learned how she felt about our first contact, and this caused her to twitch as imperceptably as the movement of her eyes when as she looked into mine, she was trying to decide whether to take my hand. And in every extra moment that I was granted in this phenomenon with this girl, I learned more. Our second contact, our third and fourth and every one to follow, I learned more about how she felt, and that's amazing.

And if time slows every time something like this occurs, every time we experience something new with someone who can conduct our heart like an orchestra, then I choose to believe that there is an infinite amount of these imperceptible reactions to learn in a person, because why should we have to keep up with time's pace and spin with the rest of the world while we feel like we're floating so high above it?