We spend our lives worried about what we should have done and what we will be doing and hardly noticing what we are doing.
As I get older more and more of my contemporaries describe this feeling that time seems to be speeding up. We seem to feel that weeks, months and seasons flash by us in a blink of an eye.
How many of us have experienced a loss of time during our evening or morning commutes to work. Before we know it, it seems we arrive at our homes and our jobs with little cognitive recollection and mystified at how we can barely remember the path and events that transpired in between.
On Mondays we discuss what we did over the weekend and by Thursday we have planned Friday night and the following weekend. On Saturday we awake praying for the day to last and then spend our Sundays wallowing in self pity at the thought of its end.
Granted we have fun on weekends and even some days during the week and at times may even seem wonderful, but in general we follow a pattern.
This pattern is where I think we lose our sense of time. The repeatative pattern of activities and mice like maze of routes we move through daily are responsible for the loss of time resulting in this sense that time is running faster.
For example when we are children the world is a mysterious and wonderous place of new discoveries and adventures. We all remember “the first time” of anything!
As an infant I still remember the first time I saw a bottle of glistening frosty Cola-cola sitting on the edge of our dinner table. It had been left there by someone and the sunlight was striking it from behind brusting through with a rich caramel color that seems so sweet. I had never tried it, yet I knew it was sweet and I wanted it, wanted it bad! At the tender age of just past 2, I reached for it and tasted it for the first time. It was cold and so so sweet, it was like nothing I had ever tasted, I was a fan! The impression was so great that to this day the memory has never left me. The taste was so wonderful that its never be repeatable. Today I have stopped drinking soft drinks and in fact find their sweetness to be too strong. That taste of heaven has never been there agian and unfortunately will never be there in the future for now, its not new.
Like this, there many firsts and each seems full of detail and wonder. Each set the mark by which all future similar experiences are to be measured.
These first time experiences were all extremely detailed. These experiences were carefully analyzed and categorised by each of the appropriate senses. Sight, touch, smell and taste. Each time we studied every detail.
Our first drive to a new location is filled with new sights that are absorbed and analyzed. We seek landmarks that are familiar and study those we have not seen before. As we begin to repeat these paths daily we block out more and more details.
We stop seeing the same places because they do not draw our interest, its just the same old stuff. Our cognitive minds only alert us of changes to the regular patterns and otherwise we are numb to there existance.
This same effect occurs at all levels during our lives. We take our beautiful homes for granted. We stop noticing the uniqueness and beauty of those we love. We find that with over 300 cable channels there’s nothing to watch.
We basically drop the now because its boringly the same. We then fill the present with thoughts of tomorrow and yesterday. We think of how things always seem better before and hope for improvement tomorrow and before we know it, we blink, and our life is all in the past.
Forget yesterdays, they can’t be changed and don’t worry about tomorrow it will soon be in the past. Live for today for its truly all we really have. Notice what’s in front of you before its gone, because one of these times the pattern will end and then thinking about it is again missing today and it all happens in a blink of a life.
Human-American 