Time
Time is a monosyllabic fiend. It just sits there, "Tic" "Tic" "Tic" advancing into the future at a notoriously steady pace. Supposedly you can slow him down by accelerating to great speed, or speed him up by soaring off into space, but most people can't take advantage of such tricks, and the most anyone who CAN do these things has accomplished is to shave a "Tic" off here or there.
In my case Time seems to speed up when I become busy, which is entirely counterintuitive. If as Einstein insists time slows down when you accelerate, then it ought to slow down when you accelerate your pace of activity. Instead it races along. When I have a job it goes faster. When I have a job and take a college course, faster still. Honestly a year can flash past under the right circumstances. And insofar as I only get a limited number of these years - less than 100 I am fairly sure - then having one or more of them "flash past" makes me very resentful.
"Why do we hurtle ourselves through every inch of time and space?" the Indigo Girls ask, adding "I must say, around some corner I can sense a resting place." Indeed. Why "flash past" all these years? Why labor at meaningless jobs and accomplishments when it all comes to dust in the end? I have visited Lakewood Cemetary in Minneapolis and I have seen there great sepulchres and obelisks, and if they had one thing in common it was that I did not recognize the names beneath these mighty memorials. Statistically we are all more likely to be struck by lightning than to make any mark upon the world that will outlast two generations. So why do it?
No idea. I mean, I gotta pay the bills, so I gotta trade my time for cash, but beside that necessity, what motivation is there for ambition? Why do I aim to the next level and the next level? When do I let it all go and settle down on with a cold drink on a sunny beach? Does life ever slow down?
Not complaining, not exactly. Just wondering why we all live this way, those of us who do, and what those of us who don't have figured out in order to escape....