Time is a funny little thing that we all believe. If you think about it, time doesn't exist, not physically anyways. When someone says that they'll meet you at seven o'clock, they are simply meaning that they will meet you when the sky is a certain darkness. Time has been studied for thousands of years and we still don't understand it compleltely. I don't understand it completely and you probably don't either.
We all perceive time differently. For example, I don't remember anything before about three years old which is when we can start cognitively remembering things. I can remember when my sister was born and when all of my siblings were born. The strangest thing is having a time when someone who is in your life now wasn't alive. My youngest brother is eleven and I remember a time when he wasn't alive. I think that's crazy because he only remembers when he was alive, he didn't know me past the age of eight. I've only known my mom past the age of twenty-five (sorry mom) which means I've only known her for not even half her life.
The weirdest thing is when you are doing something that requires a lot of effort and time, time feels like it passes really quickly and then you're done. When you aren't doing anything at all, time passes really slowly. It could also be like when you fall asleep and say you're going to take a "short" nap and you feel like you've slept for only thirty minutes, even though you've slept for about three hours. The same thing happens when you are enjoying what you're doing, like if you're hiking, it may feel like you've only hiked for about an hour, but you've been hiking for four hours. The problem with these statements is how do we know what particular amounts of time feel like? Do we have super powers that just go "Okay, that feels like about a minute" and five minutes have passed.
How can we understand time and think we can "control" time when we can't physically touch time? It is a concept that has been created to better organize and understand the world. That means it was made up. Sorry. Spoiler alert. Time isn't real; it doesn't really exist. Someone came along one day and decided to make a clock and say that there were "times" of the day. I don't know what it means for something to be one o'clock. Or midnight or any time that is on a clock. Why do we believe something that doesn't make any sense?
Another interesting point is age and aging. The way that we age is like everything else on this planet, but sometimes it doesn't feel like it. I've asked my parents about this and they've said that they don't feel their age, they feel like they are still eighteen. I don't feel like I should be allowed to turn twenty; I'm not ready to be an adult, I will no longer be a teenager. I can vividly see the first day of sixth grade and high school graduation and when I lost my first tooth. I can't be this old.
The way times passes is confusing. It feels like yesterday I was starting my first day of college and now I'm ending my first semester of my sophomore year. I woke up this morning saying that I had one more sleep until I was home for the rest of break. What if that sleep is my last? That's something about time no one thinks about. What if that one time we did that one thing was the last time we were ever going to do it? We never know when our last anything is. It's almost like time and us are on a race track and time is about three steps ahead of us, but it's not going to give us any hints because it wants to win.
As you spend this holiday season, I want you to remember the times that you have like they are your last because they could be. I'm not saying they are, but they might be. This season goes by so quickly because we are enjoying all of it so much and because the nights are longer than the days. Cherish your time. Whether you are a senior in high school waiting for your acceptance letters or a sixth grader wishing you were in college, enjoy your time in those places because it's the only chance you get. Whether you are a freshman in high school wishing you were a senior or a sophomore in college wishing you were that married couple on Facebook, cherish your time. If you take nothing else away from this article, take this: this is your time, your only time, so cherish it.
