Outside, the snowfall is fast but light. From the blanket of white on the cars, one can tell how long it’s been snowing. Against this white is the aching orange glow of the sky, and the warm fluorescent street lamps. The blinds of the houses across the street are all closed and the lights are off.
City in a snow globe. Lifeless. Plastic. Shaken.
In the darkness of my living room, Emiliana Torrini sings to me about love in the time of science.
It shouldn’t hurt me to be free
It’s what I really need
To pull myself together
But if it’s so good being free
Would you mind telling me
Why I don’t know what to do with myself
It’s the last day of the year. The little clock on my screen tells me it’s six minutes to 2 a.m. I should be in bed, but this is the only chance I have to write.
Where did the time go? I thought I would be bored, or lonely, during the holiday stretch, only to discover that it wasn’t long enough.
They say that the days, months, years pass faster, the older you get.
Maybe this means I’m getting old.
Time does seem to pass faster, the older you get. Could it be because of the fact that more dramatic physical and mental changes take place between infancy and marriage, and thereafter, there are less dramatic events to stay in the memory? I wonder.
I think it passes faster because there is less deep psychological contact between us. We spend more time working at things we only half-like at best, and the personal interrelationships get lost in the flotsam of everyday maintenance. When you’re young, you have more time for the things that actually matter, like sharing your deepest thoughts with your friends or your relationship person. I guess if you added children into the mix, that becomes a big blur of activity but you still get to share your deepest thoughts. Hopefully.
For me, work is just eating up life. When I dream, it’s in my past, in contact with those I loved and schooled and made art with.
@Uncle Joe — I’ve always suspected that time passes faster when we grow older because we take on more responsibilities, whether it’s a house, children, pets, bills, or the like. Little by little, these things take up more and more of our time. A lot of the homeowners tell me that some nights, all they do is clean their house, or the weekends are spent painting the house, mowing the lawn, etc. Perhaps as we get more industrialized, it takes us longer to travel places as well, such as work.
I would imagine that more dramatic changes make the time pass faster instead of slower, because there’s less stability. That’s certainly the case for me. When too many things happen, I have less time to reflect, and it feels like life is whizzing by.
@xibee — I like your theory. It’s like we lose touch of what’s important as we grow older, which I imagine is a very common affliction in capitalist societies (even in bigger cities, considered rat races). We chase the dollar, we work longer hours, and our priorities get put in the wrong places. These things don’t have any meaning or deeply affect us, yet they fill our lives more and more.
There’s logic in your reasoning. What still baffles me is, even when I’m not working and have plenty of spare time, I still feel time is passing faster than when I was young.
According to Taoism, one is supposed to reduce daily and simplify one’s life. I also wonder if I’m successful in this, time will seem to pass slower.