A fun, thought-provoking thing to do with a microwave:

This will only work on microwaves with digital displays, so if you have one of those truly bizarre retro microwaves with dial controls, you're out of luck. Also, if you're over 59 years old, your experience will be incomplete.

Next time you're cooking something in the microwave, watch the countdown timer. When the number of seconds left to cook hits your current age (for example, since I'm 31, I'll start when I see "0:31" on the display), think about where you are in life right now.

As the countdown progresses and each new number shows up, think about where you were in life at that age.

By the time the timer goes off, and while you are eating your newly prepared food, think about what you just thought about. With only one second to think about each year of your life, the brief, flickering images that flash through your head might be telling about how you think about yourself.

Don't read the rest of this post until you do that, because too much prior thought and discussion could skew your results.

So what happened when you did that? Did you think about most internal things, such as your developing personality, or did you think about personal accomplishments, or key family events, or stages in your academic and/or professional career? Does this experiment tell you anything about how you define yourself in your own mind?

Regardless of whether the result is meditative or philosophical in any kind of meaningful way, it's an interesting perspective to watch yourself smoothly regressing in time in your mind's eye. We live so often in the moment: even for those of us who plan ahead and preserve the past, still, our joys and pains and passions and worries are thousands of times more pressing and compelling in the moment than in the past or future. The slightest little bit of reflection about time is a helpful reminder that the present is yesterday's future and tomorrow's past; the concerns of any given moment will surely pass with time.