Time Capsule
If I were to choose one thing that I take for granted the most, I would have to say that it's TIME. Yes, TIME — the same TIME that we think we have loads of just because we think it's always there. I'm quite guilty of pushing aside many things for “when I have more time” because I just happen to have better things to do at the moment. However, it never really occurs to me that time, as we get older, becomes a privilege or a luxury more than a concept that you try to waste or kill — as illustrated by the follies of our youth.
The nature of my work requires me to pay attention to day-to-day events in global economics and politics. One would think that I, of all people, would be the most likely candidate to be aware of the time passing by everyday. Sure, many issues I deal with are time-sensitive and are bound within timeframes, but in actuality, it makes time pass by faster than ever. Because my mindset is constantly fast forwarded to these designated times, I tend to ignore the bouts of time that exists in between. And the next thing I know, the day is already over — and afterwards, I would have trouble comprehending where my day just went.
Everyday is plagued by the lack of time — never enough time to do everything. And to make matters worse, whenever I think of tomorrow, I think of the things I would have to accomplish thereby fast forwarding my brain to the end of tomorrow, without it even starting yet.
Smell the roses? Talk to my secretary… (the imaginary one sitting on the imaginary desk next to mine)
Just the other day, as I was rifling through my mp3 collection, I found some songs that I listened to in my late teen years — give or take, the second half of the nineties. As I was going through memory lane with nostalgia in tow, I suddently realized that most of the songs in there were almost ten years old. Ten years! A decade! I could have had ten kids by now (in theory, at least). It couldn't have been that long now, can it? I mean, ten years ago for me was still the 80's — tight pants, big hair and bright pink lipstick. Who was the jokester that moved the hands of the clock ten years too fast?
Listening to the oldies station at work includes listening to Take That, Selena, R.E.M, Simply Red and the Spice Girls, for crying out loud! Did we not witness these artists rise towards the top of the charts? Has it really been that long? Whatever happened to the real oldies like the Bee Gees or Chicago? And what's pretty scary is when you hear cover versions of songs that you knew the original of — and worse, you own the album of. There should be a rule that songs cannot be covered unless the original artist who originally performed it is dead. Seriously…
We all have memories to fondly look back on in past years and decades. I reckon that there is always one special year or period in our lives that we keep going back to. And from then on, we would never age. I will always be nineteen years old in my head. My years between twenty to twenty-five is just one big blur of time where I'm not exactly sure what happened. All I know is that one day, I woke up, and I'm already twenty-five… and the day before that, I was nineteen.
Where does time go? I'd like to go find it. I don't want to wake up again one day to find out that I'm already sixty… without realizing how I got there.
I always take it for granted that I will always have a tomorrow to look forward to. What if I don't? I get so consumed with all the routinary things in life that I tend to brush away those that really matter. If I have time for the mundane stuff, shouldn't it follow that I make time for the more significant ones? It's a simple concept… but how come very little of us practice it?
I cannot agree more with Will Rogers when he said: “Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.”
Ironic, isn't it?