Time Keeps On Ticking

Comparisons of time in the written word are beautiful, the analogies are forever scripted and moving. Time in the real world can slap you in the face. One minute you are eating breakfast with your kids and the next minute it’s breakfast with their kids. I see time with my own eyes and when you see it through another’s eyes it is just as surprising. I had a visitor the other day, my daughter and granddaughter were both present, we talked about all the current things going on in each others lives and the visit was quite charming with my own three generations present. After the visitor left, my daughter said, I used to babysit that kid, my granddaughter said, he is a teacher and there it was, BAM! When you child feels old, you feel ancient! It all comes rushing back like a breath of air, your daughter hosting her little brother’s birthday party because she was old enough to. The oldest being out of the house before the youngest graduates. It just zooms in and passes, just like that.

They say it all the time, how fast it passes the older you get. When you are a kid, it trickles. You wait for everything and it takes eons before it happens. It’s like driving somewhere new, seems to take half a day to get there and twenty minutes to get back home! Memories stay, most of them, even if they are buried, they surface even if just briefly. Wasting time, killing time these are the ones we are guilty of. They are not all bad, but when you do it, and realize it they make you feel unproductive, unless you have no time to lose.

We made a time capsule at a birthday party and promised to open it in ten years, it was funny to see the things the kids had included in this portable memory bank and each item was mulled over with attached memories. Even our house, when we do a renovation, we will write on the walls before covering them up and one day someone else will find the messages. My dad had me and my best friend do a letter each with our predictions for what we would be doing in ten years. We sealed them in envelopes with wax on the flap. We were teens, so opening them in our twenties was exciting. Some of the things were extreme, things about how the world might be. More interesting how we predicted ourselves to be. It said more about our development than our perception. We all have the same amount of time in a day, it is up to you how you use it.