When I was a child, I thought time had passed so slowly.  Every day was the same, and nothing ever changed.  Why can’t I just grow up and be an adult already, I would think.  The days were long, and thirteen years of school just dragged on, but now that I am an adult, time seems to speed up with each passing year.  Maybe it comes with aging or the realization of my mortality, but the concept of time is flying by.

2022 is near an end, and I feel like it just started yesterday.  I am also at the age where I know what I want in life, and I am spending more time doing the things I have always wanted to do, and yet I seem to be running out of time to get it all in.  My grandmother used to say that youth is wasted on the young.  I never understood that saying until I became older.  When you are young, you believe you have all the time in the world to figure life out.  You can spend hours, days, and years doing nothing at all, but time becomes a more precious commodity when you get older. 

How do we slow down time?  I wish I had the answer to that question, but I don’t.  Making the most of the hours you have in a day is all you can do to slow down time, but that is always easier said than done.  Time is a constant reminder that our lives on this planet are but for a mere moment.  If you have never understood the absolute quickness of passing time, look at how fast children grow.  You may not have felt it when you were a child but look at your son, daughter, niece, or nephew that you watched come into the world and become an adult just in the blink of an eye.  You never seem to feel yourself getting older, but those around us change with each passing year.  In the end, we all want more time.  Time to play, time to create, time to love, time to be loved.  What we do with each second of the day is the most critical decision we make in our lives, but we don’t know it in the moment.  Time is fleeting. 

How would you live your life differently if you knew the exact moment when your time would come to an end?  How would you spend your hours?  Would it change your perception of what it means to live?  If we gave it some thought, I think we humans would be more careful with our time if we really accepted that it is temporary.  If we knew the rat race was a losing game, would we strive to fix the quality of our lives because the quantity is limited?  I think the pandemic gave some of us a new vision.  We got the chance to see what life could be if only we had the courage to change how we spend our time.