I have an issue with time! (She says looking at the time, 11.40pm and having only just started typing when she has to get up at 6am for work!) I have always had a problem with time, all those long days sat in school looking out of the window and wishing I was elsewhere turned me into a bit of a daydreamer, or maybe it was just in my nature to sit and dream. Whatever, it became a habit to sit and think of much more pleasant things than the 8 times tables, a habit that followed me into later life. So time has a trick of slipping away from me, especially when I have a lot to do. It is nothing for half an hour or even an hour to disappear as I sit and think. (Or maybe that is just me procrastinating!) But it’s not just hours is it? Time in general seems to go so quickly, is it really 15 years since Princess Diana died?! Ahh that’s an age thing I hear you say, time goes so much faster the older you get. YES there you go; there is one of my issues with time! Why does it seem to go faster as we get older? Apparently it is because we get into the habit of doing the same things over and over, therefore the things we do repeatedly leave little impression on our minds and time seems to fly by. Basically then our brain is so bored it edits all the boring crap, hence time seems to fly! (It has actually been proven that our brains are capable of editing time!) So be less boring I guess though I’m not convinced, I have done more new things, had more new experiences in the last 10 years than I have in my entire life and yet those 10 years have gone by alarmingly quickly! And I certainly wouldn’t say my life is boring, far from it! Only a few weeks ago I dressed up in stripy pink and purple leggings, a pink tutu, pink top and flashing pink bunny ears and walked 13 miles through the streets of Plymouth during the night and this from a lifelong tom boy who loathes pink!! Obviously time does not slow down or speed up, from what I have been reading it is our perception of time that changes. Oh yes I have actually been researching the subject of time whilst dunking chocolate chip brioche into my coffee! It’s complicated stuff time and a lot of what I read had words I had never even heard of, even my O’levels in English didn’t help. And the chocolate chips in my brioche were melting and making such a mess that was the end of that. However this thing about our perception of time stuck in my head because I now find myself in the position of having to change my perception of time, to change the way I think about it. Why? Because I met Pat in March 2010 and she passed away in February 2012. We had less than 2 years together. There is my main issue with time, less than 2 years and those 2 years flew past so quickly it feels like I barely blinked, barely took a breath. As time goes by the grief is easing, becoming easier to bare, but I still find I am struggling with the unfairness of less than 2 years. Our life together was so short and somehow I have to come to terms with that, I have to take those 2 years and look at them in a different way....somehow, I have not worked out how yet.
I will leave you with a question and a quote...
Question- if you had a time machine and you could go back to yourself at any age and give yourself advice, at what age would you visit yourself and what would you say?
Quote- People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff. Who said that?!
Jules
