The Growth Disparity

I was having a conversation at home the other day and my step-mom commented that children grow up very quickly. It isn't the first time that I have heard this phrase but this time it struck a cord in me. It is easier to see the passage of time in a child, but when you are older time passes you by without you really noticing that you are ageing.

This has happened to me before when I realised that my little sisters are on the cusp of being in their twenties. There was this sensation of waking up one day and feeling like I was far older than I had noticed.

This moment of clarity can happen whether you are twenty-seven or fifty and then you find yourself sitting still for a moment, staring off into space, seeing your life pass by in your mind's eye and asking yourself where have the years gone.

source

Being awake to the fact that time is always passing by at the same rate, despite how your perception of it shifts, can have a profound affect on how we interact with our world.

For me hearing my step-mom say that caused a ricochet through my being. While my growth is now slowed to the point where it can be hard to notice, none the less it is happening; My rapid rush through toddler stages and onward into the full bloom of puberty, is now a casual walk through my first decade of adulthood.

When I look back on my past I do so with a feeling of nostalgia which can dip to the depths of depression depending on which memories I chose to focus on. There are moments of mirth like when I think of my bother hanging me by clothes pins on the line as a small child or a feeling of fond remembrance at my evening walks from my secondary school in Waterford Bottom, to my home in Welches Terrace, with my mind full of adventure.

It strikes me that time has trickled through my fingers like water in a sieve but has moulded me in the same way that water relentlessly carves rock into caves.

When I look forward to gauge what the nebulousness of growth and time may hold for me, I realise how fruitless it is to try to plan for anything. Speculating is not much better than assuming and we all know the story of that.

I settled into a kind of grim realisation that even as I focus fully and wholly on achieving my goals, the end of each day comes like clockwork and another day is added to my tally. The passage of time in and of itself promises nothing, it is only one's action in the present moment that truly affects the future, and to be fair, the future that it affects can be as far as a decade or as short as a day

Many have touted theories on time and growth and also on death, the natural and sometime  'unnatural conclusion' of the inevitable march to the grave. I have often said that we aren't really growing older, we are simply dying a little bit more with every year that passes.

I have have sense come to realise how depressing that thought can be, and I have chosen to instead to treasure each moment of the past, present and future; to hold on to the seconds that I have full control of and to release myself gracefully into the arms of time.

And more directly that that I will make a point of being aware of the passage of time, I never want to feel like I have no idea where my life has gone. I always want to be able to say, "Aha, yes. It has been what, five years now and what a wonderful five years those had been..."