Sunlight is about eight minutes old when it hits your face. Even the present arrives a little late.

Light leaving the sun takes about eight minutes to reach your face, so the warmth you feel is already slightly historical. Nothing reaches you live. Sound lags, nerves lag, and your brain builds what it calls now out of information that has already travelled. That is not a trick being played on you; it is the ordinary condition of being somewhere.

Worth remembering when you expect yourself to react perfectly on the spot. A beat behind is where everybody actually lives. Take the pause you are already taking, and answer the hard question after it rather than during.