Where does the time go? As we surf further into adulthood these questions of the rapid passage of time become more frequent. We find ourselves stunned by whichever current month is on our calendar. "How is it already September?" we'll ask as if the month changed mysteriously overnight unbeknownst to us. "Where did the summer go?" or "I can't believe it's almost Christmas" are common queries by the perplexed adult set. I remember always being warned that when you got older life finds a way to start speeding up. We were told by our elders that days would become weeks and weeks would blend into months as times momentum grows more powerful. I guess I never believed this would be true. Or so painfully true. But here I am wondering where the time is going.

Do you remember how long grade three was? It was a lifetime. The summer holidays between school years lasted like what was an eternity. Time crawled when we were younger. But why? The measurement of time has not changed since we were children. It's not like back in 1980 an hour had 71 minutes. Days have and always will be only 24 hours long and the minutes pass at the same rate regardless of our age, So why did the passage of time seem so much slower when we were children? Because nowadays in our adult life, we live from one significant event to the next. Our lives are made up by a series of meaningful and major events or activities. And this is primarily how we are focused. "Wednesday I have that work party and than my parents are visiting for lunch on Sunday and then the following weekend we are off to the cottage." Our life's agenda is made up of a number of events that are sandwiched amongst in between time. The in between time is predominately filled by routine. Go to work, go to the gym, watch TV and go to bed. Rinse and repeat. We subconsciously live for things that are four days away so the days prior to this are played out with no significance. We just follow the standard procedure. Go to work, go to the gym, watch TV and go to bed.

As a child, we lived everyday to the fullest. We were not yet blessed or cursed in some respects with the gift of foresight. Though we ached for Christmas time or our birthdays we still treated every day as something significant. Whether it was going to school, playing in a gully, sleeping over at a friend's house or watching cartoons. Each day was looked at with a "what can we do today" type attitude. Children don't have or do not succumb to routine. As children we truly lived for the day.

Now one of the responsibilities of adulthood is we must plan for the future. Unlike our child counterparts we always need to be thinking of things that are further down the road, be it 6 weeks, 6 months or 6 years. Living for the day, though a liberating notion, is not necessarily the greatest advice. The best recipe is to incorporate some of our childhood thinking into our adult lives. We need to ignore the concept of routine and learn to better fill and appreciate the in between time. We should stop living 6 days away and try to focus on what we are doing today.

…but that's just my opinion.

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