It’s been nearly a month since I last posted, yet looking back at my most recent post, it seems like it was yesterday. What I mean when I use that phrase is that I know, logically, that a great deal of time has passed, but I remember the moment I thought and felt those things as clearly as I remember this morning. Maybe more clearly, as my posts often come out of outstanding moments of deep thought.
Time is a very strange thing. We talk about killing it, making it, and sparing it or freeing it up (which is a very odd phrase). It goes by sometimes in bursts, sometimes in a slow crawl, and sometimes in a sprint. And the funny thing is, even with all the things we say about time, we only rarely notice it passing.
My mind tends to organize memories or images by their homogeneity. Sitting here on the sleeper sofa with my back against one arm, my feet on the other, I can think of many, many other moments where I have sat just so, hammering away on my keyboard—different sofas, perhaps, and different keyboards, but the same idea. I did this early this morning, and unless I’m consciously remembering my actions of the day (including a job interview, dinner with my family, and driving to Raleigh and back), I might as well have been in this seat all day.
For me, life goes by in segments. There are small ones in moving from one activity to another—classes in school or projects I’m working on—and large ones in periods of life—one semester to the next, or even from high school to college and college to the mysteries of post-graduate life. I do think it’s important and necessary, though, every once in a while to pause and be conscious of time itself, of how it’s going by and we can never get it back. It helps us appreciate what we are always losing and always gaining.
