Last Day Of The Year

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.

5 comments

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. @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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

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