TIME PASSES SO QUICKLY

 

Well, here we are at the end of another year. In less than twelve hours, it will become 2025, and I’m not ready. Why, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

Decades ago when the year 2025 was brought up, it was light years (however many those are) away from the time in which I was living. In fact, I actually didn’t believe I’d be alive when that year, or maybe even any of the 2000s came around. It all seemed so far away and so Twilight Zoneish. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine all that time passing or becoming as old as I’d need to be when 2025 arrived.

Well, silly moi. I guess I just didn’t have the imagination required to think that far ahead. And, I don’t know about you, but I never believed I’d live to be this old or become this old. And, yes, I know it’s a good thing to be this old, to have lived this long since it is certainly better than the only known alternative. Still, it somehow seems to have arrived all too soon and all too quickly.

It’s times like this I wish I could have one more conversation with my grandmother or any one of her peers or maybe even her grandmother. Her life changed so much during her time on earth. From an outhouse to indoor plumbing, from horse and buggy to automobiles, from growing and preserving her own food to getting it at the grocery store, from traveling on a train for days to flying from one state to another in a matter of hours. I’d really like to talk with her about all the changes she saw and experienced. I regret I wasn’t aware enough during her lifetime to have this discussion.

This, of course, leads me to think about my own life and experiences. I remember as a child, time moved extremely slow and now, it moves at an amazing pace. So far, my grandchildren haven’t asked me about my own childhood and the changes I’ve experienced during my life. I wonder if it just hasn’t occurred to them that what they’re living right now is nothing like what I lived at their ages. I also wonder if they simply don’t have time to think about time because life’s rhythms are moving at the fastest tempo ever. 

If there was one new year’s wish I’d make, it would be for time to slow down, to allow me perform a slow waltz as opposed to the quickstep required by today’s schedules. But we all know that if “wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” so a slower pace in 2025 isn’t likely. 

And, I guess the whole point of my looking at time, past, present and future, is to remind myself to enjoy every single millisecond as much as possible. 

So, here’s to a Happy New Year and 2025…may it bring me and all those I love and cherish a bright and enjoyable future that doesn’t pass us by too quickly.