Time is a funny thing. Remember when you were a kid? New Year’s to Christmas seemed like an eternity. Yet, somehow summer vacation, smack in the middle of that desert of time, skipped by in a flash. Ah, the conundrums of life.
I had found how quickly college whizzed by disturbing, but then I graduated and ‘life’ happened. Planning a wedding, finding a job and setting up an apartment rushed, tsunami-like, over me, gave me little time to think. And so it went.
Somewhere in my thirties, I think I did have a fleeting notion that time had somehow ‘sped up’. But, back then, we didn’t even listen to ourselves.
My forties brought about an interesting paradigm – sickness, death and unhappiness. Now time slowed to a crawl. Sitting with my dying mother-in-law for half an hour – listening to her struggle to breath – was torture. And the nights spent lying awake, crying because the love of your life doesn’t love you any more, was even more terribly slow. Time had stopped.
As I approached fifty, I’d made some changes in my life. I’d moved on and carved a new, happy life for myself. And even though life – well, really death – invaded once again. But it was all right. Time had returned to normal.
But now, as I’m sliding towards sixty, time has sped up again. I don’t feel ‘old’ – until I see some ‘60s rocker doing a commercial for reverse mortgages or funeral insurance. Even then it’s more of a ‘How the hell did that happened ?’ thing. Nevertheless, I felt the world speeding up beneath me.
However, the fact is that it’s only our perception of passing time that’s quickened. Time is a constant. It is we who change.
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