Uh, so it’s October. Already. It’s spring. Term
Four starts tomorrow. Christmas is only two and a half months away. Just feels
like it has gone crazy fast. In fact, I feel like the last ten years have gone crazy fast.
I think it is generally an adult awareness
thing; we are governed by schedules, many living for the weekend and whatnot,
so it is impossible for the passing of time to go unnoticed. Birthdays zoom by
ruthlessly quick the older you get and age deadlines that seemed a hundred
years away in your youth are suddenly looming over you. I’m positive as a child
I had no real concept of time; not within the day, or the month or the year.
Exciting days (like our birthday or Christmas, parties and the like) took forever
to arrive and were sumptuously long. Days at school didn’t drag and weekends
felt vacation-like in length. More significantly though, I certainly didn’t
notice my own clock, if that makes sense. I was aware I got older each year but
as it didn’t have a dramatic impact on my day-to-day, I barely registered the
slowly climbing number. There was always something about “growing up” that I
aspired to, whether it be gaining some height (which of course didn’t quite
eventuate the way I hoped), being able to drive or travel the world (one of
those has a tick at least!) or starting a family in a house of my own (...) but
the world of adulthood always seemed impossibly far away to me in my youth.
I miss that oblivious approach to my life, I
yearn for that ignorant happiness, optimism and hope. I wish I hadn’t wanted to
be older without understanding what that meant, I wish I had had the awareness
I have now, so that I might try harder to cherish the freedom of being little,
new and unaware. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way. As a
teacher, sometimes I’m envious of my students; that they’re only just starting
out or that, at the very least, they’re still inhabiting that time-irrelevant bubble.
So many of the conversations I have (or have been fortunate enough to have had)
with my grandparents seem to revolve around reminiscing or lamenting that time
has caught up with them. Not always in a wholly negative way of course, but
often just in awe of how, seemingly in the blink of an eye, they’ve traversed
several decades of existence, when it feels only yesterday they were small.
I’ll be thirty in a few years which is scary. I’m
not even sure why it’s scary, I just
know it is. I feel it. We all have a life-plan of sorts (whether it’s well-mapped
out or not) which is our own worst enemy. Things happen when the time is right.
Even if it isn’t the time you thought it would. This Happy Chappy is going to
try her darndest to make peace with her resolutely ticking time-keeper.
