?Time is a very misleading thing.? ?GEORGE HARRISON
There?s a countdown happening in a small square on the bottom left corner of our kitchen whiteboard. Last time I remember looking, the number was 47.
This box, updated daily by someone in this house, shows how many days until a concert coming up this summer. My kids seem to like this visual reminder. At normal times of the year when this is expected, say Christmas, I?m all about a countdown. Especially for the last 12 days.
But I?m slightly freaked out about how quickly this number is shrinking. I had glanced when it was in the lower 70s. Next thing I knew it was 68. I think I remember 54. And then 47 showed up.
This isn?t about the concert. That?s fine. It?s the sheer speed at which the days are disappearing that astounds me. When I consider this mass time reduction, my mind goes back to last Friday, a rare quiet afternoon in my office, when the final two hours seemed to move slower than the entire previous 30 days checked off of the eraser board?s box.
How does this work, anyway?
I think I could blame working for a newspaper for my mind?s time loss. We live in a world of ?next Wednesdays.? Here, ?this week? could mean this issue week, which only carries a 50 percent chance of meaning a literal week on a desk calendar.
I could also blame kids. Any parent can confirm that the child who turned 3 last week got their driver?s license yesterday, will finish college on Tuesday and get married next month. (But I?m not ready to be a grandma!)
I will go ahead and blame summer while I?m at it. There are no three consecutive months that dissolve quite like June, July and August.
I read on a blog that time goes faster as an adult because our brains are already developed (well, more or less) and we?ve been there, done that. Routine has set in.
?Every night,? a blog contributor named Tracy posted, ?when I go to bed, I try to think of what I did that day that counted. It might be something small, like saving a caterpillar that was going to get run over in the driveway. Sometimes it?s something bigger…. Some days it was just that I was grateful for something.?
The consensus from people I heard from about this subject (namely parents experiencing time warps between their kids early years and current years, in addition to the years that haven?t happened yet, but apparently will?and so soon) is that doing new things is our best bet for slowing time to a comfortable pace. Or at least to a pace that doesn?t slip away from us quite as quickly.
Consistently learning new things, going somewhere we?ve never been, meeting new people (preferably some that aren?t exactly like we are), being thankful, trying new stuff, and being spontaneous.
Maybe these could work. Or is it just a matter of looking harder for a caterpillar to save?
Or maybe I could just to stop looking at the white board in my kitchen. Now it says 36.
