Time Passages
January 5th, 2007 by Richard CockrumThe older you get, the faster time seems to go. It’s been sixteen days since Christmas, five days since New Year’s Day. They both seem like yesterday. Can you remember everything you’ve done? Did you do everything you wanted to do?
I’ve long believed that the reason time seems to go faster as you get older is that each day, each hour, becomes an ever smaller portion of the amount of time you’ve been alive. Experience adds to experience, each a smaller portion of what you remember.
When you’re a child, time is a vista that opens before you. A day, awhole glorious day, is time enough to play a game of ball, play tag, eat three good meals and two good snacks, take a nap, watch your favorite cartoon, hang out with your friends, and ride your bike. You look back over the day as you lay in bed, remembering all the many wonders you experienced, and knowing that tomorrow is a long way away.
By the time you hit late adulthood, you get up in the morning wondering how you’re going to get everything done. You have to get a cup of coffee or tea, eat two meals, make a telephone call, work on the project that’s due next week (only five days from now!), and read for a half hour. As you lie in bed looking back over your day, it seems crammed, but yet you didn’t do half of what you had planned. And tomorrow will come too soon.
Now imagine that you were born fifteen billion years ago. You as you, the personality that you are now. How fast do you think each day would appear to go by? Fifteen billion years of experiences all available, instead of the twenty or forty or sixty or eighty years you have now. The world races by like one of those images of what travel at the speed of light looks like. How can you focus? How can you learn? How can you love?
Why do you want to live forever in this body?
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January 6th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Just today I was thinking about what I would be doing 20 years from now. I tend to think of my life in 5 year increments. As a result, anything that required planning beyond that point (like retirement) was not on the radar.
Another thing I realized about time is that it passes whether I did what I wanted to or not. So I started doing the things that I want to do. I also made 3 things a priority so that I don’t feel like I don’t have enough time. As long as I do those 3 things my day is complete. Everything else falls into place.
It’s only recently that I’ve felt alive. It’s like I woke up one day and saw that life was passing me by. Now, I want to live to accomplish certain things that I feel are mine to do. On the other hand, because I am doing what I want to do everyday, if I drop dead this instant, I feel like I have lived. My house is in order. It’s a great way to live.
January 7th, 2007 at 2:34 am
Hi Nneka!
When you’re able to say that, you’re know you’re where you need to be. You’re past doing what you feel you’re expected to do, and doing what you feel you should do.