I’m not sure when exactly it happened but something transpired in my life to make it seem like time itself was going faster. I know it’s some trick of the mind or perception, but it was probably sometime after the age of 40 where it just seemed like every time I turned around it was either “the holidays” or summer again. This was something Mario and I used to talk about at length because he noticed it too.

When we were kids, days seemed to just drag on. If you were looking forward to something, say, a birthday or summer vacation, it would seem to take forever to get to that date. I remember my mom actually telling me that the older you get, the faster time seems to fly and I also remember thinking what utter nonsense!

Well, I have to give to my mom because she was definitely right there. And I don’t like it. Not that she was right, but that time does seem to be flying.

There are glimpses I can catch of time moving slower, but they only happen when I basically remove myself from every day life and that is not a sustainable practice. On a recent camping trip, I sat at the beach and watched the waves rhythmically curling, then collapsing into foam and finally easing onto the sand. It didn’t seem like I sat there long, yet apparently almost 2 hours had elapsed.

Time is something I think, and certainly write about, more and more. I feel like time is like a puzzle for me to figure out. Science tells us that time is a constant (barring Einstein’s special relativity theory, of course) and that it moves only in a straight line–forward. But then there is that curious perception of time passing to the individual.

Time marches on, as the old saying goes. With the passage of time, things change. People change. People die. This is the natural order of things. For something that we can not physically see or touch, time rules our lives.

Time is precious.

One thing I have noticed is that when I was much younger, not only did I not ruminate a lot on time, but I lived more in the moment. I could chalk it up to the folly of youth. Honestly, thinking back on it, I did not think too much about the future.

In one way, I treasure those times past because I seemed to be in possession of a general innocence of what the future would hold. I did not know and was untroubled by it. Halcyon days.

With time, comes age and if you’re lucky, wisdom. I truly do not feel I’ll ever be “old” but at the same time, as years seemingly gallop by, I start to feel more and more ageless. One day, hopefully a long time from now, my time will come where this existence ceases, as it does for all living things.

I feel there are moments, like my time on the beach, where I can stand still–quietly watching. That’s the exchange–time slows only when you’re still or focused. A balance must be struck to hold time as well as let it go.

What this all boils down to in the present moment, is me coming to terms with the importance of time and how limited it really it. I’m sure at some point, Mario thought he had all the time in the world to live, but that was not the case. He had 17,450 days to live his life.

We are all unaware of how many days we’ll each actually get. But the more time passes, the more I feel that a slower pace is what’s needed. Yes, one can not stop time, but I feel we each have a choice in the pace at which time is going.