I know we’ve only known each other four weeks and three days: Steve Martin, Rob Bell, Aions and Aions
[Speaking to Marie in bed while she sleeps]
Navin R. Johnson: I know we’ve only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days. And the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day, and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half. I have it written down, but I can show it to you tomorrow if you want to see it.
The above quote comes from the uproariously hilarious 1979 film The Jerk, starring Steve Martin. You may have heard of it. It’s personally one of my favorite comedy’s. The film is packed with an abundance of absurdly zany, dead pan jokes like the one above. My favorite kind of humor 😉
This Steve Martin joke came to mind recently because the Greek concept of “Aion” has been popping up a lot lately in my reading. Most recently in Rob Bells book Love Wins. Rob explains that “Aion…has several meanings. One is ‘age’ or ‘period of time’; another refers to intensity of experience.” I think what Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin) is describing above is the later definition of Aion; the intensity of experience.
I have heard the concept illustrated in this helpful way: often times human beings’ experience of time can be quite variant. It can be thought of as an accordion. For instance, when you’re driving through Nebraska or sitting at work with nothing to do, what happens to your perception of time? That’s right, it slows way down (picture the accordion being stretched out). Sometimes a half hour seems like two hours (especially at the end of the day on a Friday). Conversely, when you’re spending time with your loved one, like Navin is describing above, or doing something you enjoy, time seems to fly by. It’s almost like time doesn’t exist.
So in summation, this blog post only took me a half hour to write but it seems like it’s taken 3 hours and 25 minutes…weird.
Nice.I haven't seen the film, but that's still a nice quote.
Oh man, it's best Steve Martin film ever!
the jerk is legendary! you could say it is aion-ic?
You got it Tripp! LOL, definitely timeless :)
[...] chronological phenomenon that Schopenhauer is eluding to sounds a lot like what the Greeks call Aion, which Jesus is found frequently referring to throughout the New Testament. In any event, in 2012 [...]