As Time Goes By

When I was younger time seemed to stand still. It was almost like time was an enemy. I can remember waiting for Christmas to come and it seemed as though a one month wait seemed like a lifetime. Waiting for my next birthday was torture, as time dragged on. When I was younger my age was measured in years and months. I was six and a half before I became seven. The milestones, my 12th birthday, 16th birthday and then my 21st birthday, all came very slowly.

Now I am retired and officially a senior citizen. I see time in an altogether different light. Time is different, but it is still the enemy. When I was a child I had decades of time ahead of me, but now it seems as though time is quickly slipping away.  I can remember thinking about retirement, as if it were something so far ahead in the future that I had all the time in the world to think about it. Well now that time is here. It seemed like it was just yesterday when I started working and the day before yesterday when I entered college. What happened?

I have been retired for about 5 years now. I can remember thinking about what I would do with all of my new found spare time. In scary moments I thought about myself just sitting and waiting for time to pass, as I did not have enough to do to occupy my time. Now I wonder where the hell all of that time has gone. I don't work for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I don't have a schedule of when to grocery shop or run errands or walk the dog. I go to the gym, run a few errands and I write my blogs, but sometimes there just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day to do everything.  When I have a party to go to, a special event or a vacation I am excited abut going on, it seems as if they come and go in a snap of the finger. I went back to the US one year ago for a 3 week vacation, but it seems as though it were only a couple of months ago.  I am planning my next vacation to the US for next year and I am sure it will be here before I know it.

It's really strange that time becomes a completely different concept the more we age. Maybe it's because at birth we have no concept of time and in our youth, time is measured in anticipated pleasures. While as we grow older we measure our achievements, our hopes and dreams, what could have been and what can still be, in the terms of how much time we may have left, rather than having all the time in the world. As time goes by we can't worry about losing it, we have to concentrate on living for the moment and making the best of time, without measuring it.