Shallow Be My Name

So I”m thinking that you’re thinking at this point I have abandoned the blog. I’m quite sure that you remember it’s the time of year I have to either “put up” or “shut up” and I’m thinking that you’re thinking I finally decided to save my 24 bucks for something more important. More rewarding. Something that requires a little less work. Like going to a movie. These days I’m pretty sure you can still munch on a large popcorn while watching a newly released flick at your local cinema for somewhere in the vicinity of 24 bucks. Although you’ll probably have to bring your own beverage. Anyway, if that’s what you’re thinking I’m afraid I have to tell you that, like it or not, you’re wrong. I haven’t abandoned the blog. I just haven’t been writing it. There’s a difference.

What I have decided to abandon however, is time. Not time in and of itself. I mean that would be entirely different. And, at least in my mind, not something I look forward to. No. What I’ve decided to abandon is the concept of time. And you should know this is not a spur of the moment thing. I have actually spent quite a bit of time over the past few months thinking about time. Which is not surprising because, quite frankly, trying to understand this rather elusive construct takes, well as you can imagine, a great deal of time. Now I know what’s going through that mind of yours. You’re wondering why a shallow person such as myself would spend so much time thinking about time. Well the truth of it is, time has a rather significant impact on all of our lives, mine included. So it shouldn’t be all that surprising that, given my current state of affairs, what with being recently retired and all, that I would spend at least some of this free time (is anything really free these days?) thinking about this most perplexing of ideas.

Let’s face it, this whole time thing can be very confusing. Think about it. You’ve got 10 minutes to do something. How long is that? Well it really depends on what you are doing, doesn’t it. You might be slugging your way through an exam, trying to finish the, as always, unreasonable number of questions that have been posed to you. At some point you look up and realize you have half an exam to complete and only 10 minutes left to impart all of your wisdom. It’s happened to me and I can tell you that 10 minutes goes by pretty darn fast. But here’s the thing. Now you’re sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on your way to a really important meeting. You have 10 minutes to get there (which isn’t much time) and all you can think of is this is the longest 10 minutes you have ever spent in your car. This particular 10 minutes seems like an eternity. See what I mean? It’s confusing.

Or how about when you go on vacation. You know there are only a few weeks before you leave but somehow they seem to move at a snail’s pace. One day takes longer than the next. You know that plane ride to paradise is just around the corner but the corner doesn’t seem to be getting any closer. And then it finally happens. You get to your destination. The one you were looking forward to for so, so long. The one that you scrimped and saved every penny for over the past year. The one that in the blink of an eye, is over. I mean it seemed like just yesterday you got on that plane to leave and now, here you find yourself already on the way home. Where did the time go? How is it that those same three weeks that took so long to get through before you left, seem to fly by when you’re having fun? I ask you. How can the same unit of measure seem to be so entirely different depending on what it is you are doing?

As if all of this is not mixed up enough, we (as in humans) decide to walk right in and mix things up even more. Which is why twice in every year we change our time. First we lose an hour of sleep, then we gain an hour. That’s of course if you are in fact, asleep. If you’re like me, you’re usually totally awake during this artificial manipulation of time and you find yourself wondering if you really do need more than 24 hours a day to get things done. I can answer that for you. Probably not.

Now you can see how, through all of this thinking, I have come to the rather obvious conclusion that time, in and of itself, is simply a frivolous human construct that places artificial constraints around what we do and when we do it. So no, I haven’t abandoned the blog. And I am quite confident that I will be back, if for no other reason than to get my monies worth for yet another year. I’m afraid however, I just can’t tell you when that might be.