Discontinuity

I consistently find myself wrestling with the concept of time, how something that is an arbitrary human invention and so dependent on the motion of the universe can be so inconsistent. It’s near impossible to reconcile the erratic movement of time, and sometimes that fact takes my breath away.

Time moves so quickly when I am awake through midnight and my days span two days when I am awake for 20 hours and sleep another 12. I hardly have time to breathe when my schedule is full and my life is a whirlwind of road trips, shopping, dinners out, and games played. Yet, I look back and wonder where I spent all my time. Where is my receipt?

Yet, when I it is 10 in the morning and I am wide awake and ready to do something right now with the knowledge that no one will be available for another seven hours, by which time I will be tired, time passes as slowly as it ever has. When I wait for someone to know at my door or for an ordered package to arrive, I check messages constantly, hoping that somehow these people or items will be able to travel through time and into my home.

I wonder how time can pass so slowly at those times when I am running errands and trying to add just-one-more-thing to my list while I know someone is waiting for me (spoiler alert: I will not make it on time). It perplexes me that I can be the person who is waiting, both anxious and bored and wondering just what-the-hell is taking so long.

I understand that time is about perception, and that our brains perceive time differently when we are in a rush or, even better, in the zone. I get the concept of flow. But I am still mystified by the passing of time, how sometimes it rushes and sometimes it trickles. I feel frustrated at my inability to control it, to keep up or to maintain my composure when it’s molasses-slow.

That I am in the middle of a hellish week, anxiety-filled and reducing the time I have to try to cope to a seemingly-few seconds, while mourning the death of one of my closest friends just over a year ago and recognizing that I was married more than thirteen years ago, is a strange convergence. It’s a place where I can recognize both the expeditiousness and the lethargy of time. I am confronted by the mystery of time from every angle.

Eventually, the moment of confusion will pass until it resurfaces in the future. At another time.