I have begun to suspect that time behaves differently in Israel.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
The clocks insist that sixty seconds make a minute and sixty minutes make an hour, but after nearly five years of living here, I have reached the conclusion that the clocks are engaged in a conspiracy.
Six months disappear in what feels like six weeks. Entire years vanish without warning. Yet a single day can stretch so long that you begin to suspect it has ambitions of becoming a month.
Scientists tell us that our perception of time is influenced by novelty, memory, emotion and attention. We do not experience clock time. We experience subjective time. The brain records meaningful, emotional, and unusual events differently from routine ones, creating the strange phenomenon whereby years can seem to disappear while individual moments become unforgettable.
This explains a great deal about Israel. Most countries organize themselves around calendars. Israel organizes itself around events.
Nobody says, “That happened in March.”
People say, “That was before the war.”
Or, “That was after the election.”
Or, “That was during the hostage negotiations.”
Or, “That was during the other hostage negotiations.”
History, in most countries, stays politely in the past.
History in Israel keeps turning up uninvited and demanding coffee.
You wake up expecting an ordinary Tuesday and by lunchtime discover you are living through something that will eventually require its own chapter in a history textbook.
Again.
Perhaps that is why the years disappear.
Life here is dense.
There is too much happening.
Too much history.
Too much emotion.
Too much reality.
The brain barely has time to finish processing one event before the next one arrives carrying paperwork. And yet, paradoxically, certain days last forever. I know this because I am currently living inside one of them.
My cat, Petunia, is in an emergency veterinary hospital.
When I dropped her off yesterday afternoon, she was jaundiced, not eating and frighteningly unwell. Since then, there have been blood tests, X-rays, intravenous fluids, B12 injections, discussions about feeding tubes and the sort of veterinary conversations that make pet owners suddenly develop a detailed interest in liver function despite possessing absolutely no medical qualifications.
Petunia is still there.
I am here.
And time has become unbearable.
The hospital tells me she is calm and resting.
The hospital means this as reassuring news. Unfortunately, human beings are spectacularly bad at waiting. The phrase “calm and resting” occupies approximately four seconds of clock time and sixteen hours of emotional time.
I have not seen her since yesterday. I know she is being cared for. I know she is receiving treatment. I know that feeding tubes and IV fluids are not signs of surrender but signs that the veterinary team is fighting for her. None of this prevents my brain from behaving like an unpaid intern left unsupervised with unlimited access to catastrophe.
Researchers have found that waiting for important news creates profound distortions in our perception of time. Anxiety slows subjective time, while prolonged waiting can intensify distress, creating a vicious cycle in which worry makes time drag and dragging time creates more worry.
Which explains why the twenty-four hours since I left Petunia at the hospital have felt longer than some of the wars I have lived through.
Waiting has its own physics. An hour waiting for laboratory results lasts approximately three business days. A night waiting for a phone call from a doctor lasts somewhere between a month and a geological era. A day spent waiting to hear whether a beloved animal will recover appears to operate entirely outside the known laws of space and time.
Meanwhile, Petunia is reportedly calm.
This feels deeply unfair.
The creature with the medical crisis is relaxed.
The human paying the invoices is slowly dissolving.
Cats possess many remarkable qualities. They can sleep for twenty hours a day. They can locate the only clean item of clothing covered in fur. They can hear the opening of a food packet from three suburbs away.
Most irritatingly, they appear to understand something about time that humans do not. Petunia is not worrying about tomorrow’s blood results. She is not calculating veterinary expenses. She is not refreshing WhatsApp every six minutes. She is lying in a hospital cage, receiving treatment and existing entirely in the present moment. I, meanwhile, have mentally visited every possible future, most of them terrible.
Perhaps this is the real reason time feels different in Israel. Not because history moves faster here. Not because life is more dramatic. Not because the years disappear. Perhaps it is because living here teaches you, over and over again, that the future is largely imaginary.
All any of us ever really possess is now.
The current conversation.
The current meal.
The current siren.
The current prayer.
The current phone call.
The current cat.
The years disappear because memory compresses them into stories. The days stretch because love refuses to compress anything at all. Scientists have repeatedly found that emotion alters our experience of time, making important moments feel longer, heavier and more vivid.
The clock says only a day has passed since I left Petunia at the hospital.
My heart disagrees.
The clock measures time.
Love measures waiting.
And waiting, it turns out, takes forever.
Talyah Ginsberg is a writer, cat whisperer, and unapologetic Zionist living in Ra’anana. She documents the beautiful disaster of Israeli life with wit, grit, and just enough hope to stay functional. Her essays mix comedy with truth, despair with devotion, and politics with the kind of honesty that makes people nervous.