I’ve always had trouble keeping up with time as it goes by. I’ve always felt like time was slipping away from me, like years were going by too fast. There’s a lyric from a Pink Floyd song I like and it goes something like “Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time.” I think that as I get older this line gets truer and truer. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m getting old too quick or something, I don’t even see this as a bad thing necessarily. It’s just that sometimes when I just want to savour a moment or a time it’s over before I know it. However the worst part is that whenever I need to time to go quicker, it seems to go painfully slow. For example, whenever I’m in the middle of an exam, or waiting for food in a restaurant, it seems to crawl at an unbearable pace.
This year was no exception, it all seemed over before it had begun. What was different however, is that I finally figured out that it doesn’t matter how quick I have perceived time to have gone by, it still moves at the same pace. It’s this understanding that has also made me realise that I need to stop worrying about how quickly everything goes by and just enjoy the ride. Whether its the dreadfully slow pace time seemed to move when I was waiting at the end of my maths exam, or the way it seemed to be slipping out of my hand in my enterprise exam. As long as I just calm my mind and enjoy what I’m doing, it doesn’t matter if it feels like its been 5 minutes or 5 hours.
Something else that I think has helped me overcome this fear of time slipping away is looking to the future. I like to think that the future has opportunities for me to exploit and plenty of good things in store. This helps since instead of making me anxious of the future it actually makes me yearn for it. If I haven’t done too great in something then I know that I will have an opportunity to improve on it in the future, so instead of dreading the present I look to the future and see what’s in store.
Overall I think that by far this has been one of the biggest realisations I have had this past year and has definitely eased my mind in a lot of ways as well as just making me a more measured person.
