Time is fast-forwarding

Is it just me or is time just taking leaps randomly? Just yesterday it was New Year’s and now we are half way through the year. I had my birthday so I am hoping senility kicks in early so I can forget I am not married by now. I wake up on Monday and blink and it’s Saturday, blink again and it is Wednesday, sometimes I go to bed on a Friday and wake up on Monday. It means that I am either lazy, or crazy or God is playing with the fast-forward button. It must be a divine prank, after all it is all in his power to play with time, but time is flying by with no explanation. This week I was happy to win at my local quiz, I would have been happy just to get a particular question right, I studied Greek and Roman history out of interest but every now and again it rewards. The question was to name the Roman poet who coined the phrase Carpe Diem – Horace, my mind wondered back to Rotherfield Hall and Mr. Ferraro prattling along, some of it stuck. I read Horace, it is some of the best poetry, it is rhythmically structured and can translate into any language. He wrote almost a million words in books and letters, but we remember him for Carpe Diem – seize the day. It is a cliché, so simple and yet hard to do. Particularly if you have no variety in your life, if your life is a routine then you will be dragged into the mire. Sometimes the day seizes you before you even get a chance to react, you find it has thrown you to the ground and stomped on you. Then the next day you wait for the day in ambush, ready to seize it, then you get a call and find that the day had ambushed you all along. When one is broke God pushes the pause button, days seem like years, then when you have money it is like fast-forward… rtrtrtrrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrrtrttrtrrtrt Bang!!! Life has become rtrtrtrtrtrt! The sound of speeded up footage. So its Christmas trtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtr… Christmas again rtrtrtrtrtrtrt… another year rtrtrtrtrtrt another year. No one believes me when I say that I never planned my life this way, they say “you should do this” or “you should do that” like it never occurred to me. Life is like the wildebeest waiting by the rivers edge, some take the plunge and jump, others stand by the side waiting for the right time. This is the problem – I have always wanted to seize the day, it is just that I was waiting for the right time to seize it. So you are born, fast-forward, graduate fast-forward, marry fast-forward, children fast forward, grandchildren fast-forward……. Dead All this time you wonder where time went. My younger siblings are aging two years for each of mine, Zoom and they are looking you in the eye all grown up. Where did all that time go? Was I in a coma? We have always thought of time as a universal constant measured by the speed of light like Einstein said in his E=mc2 equation. Surely time is fluctuating or our perception of it is, or we are too busy to notice. Even if we seized the day, it is not long enough, we need a week or year – Carpe Annum. Sounds too ambitious, Horace reduced the time frame so we could not give up after a month, a day is manageable, a day can fit nicely in your arms, and it can be seized with minimal effort. ramaisibo@hotmail.com