On the Speed of Life: Part 3 – A Review

I lose sometimes, and that really is okay. There’s more to life than being right and being wrong, and there’s more to life than plans going exactly the way you’d expect.

I made mistakes today. I skipped out on research and gave passes to things I shouldn’t have and wound-up bearing none of the fruit I was determined to harvest. But that’s okay. Because even in the failure there was a good time.

Deep in the throes of this blog’s active period I wrote two “reviews” sharing the title “On the Speed of Life.” In them I took a stand against the idea that time can fly. I disagreed that every second would be weighted different and that some days were “slow” and others were “fast.”

I still find the notion impossible. I lived every second of my mistakes just the same as I lived every second of the successes that inexplicably followed. But I find it interesting to consider when I wrote these initial articles. Both of them came while I was waiting on impending change in my life. The kind of immeasurable change you romanticize about.

The first blog came out as I was waiting to move to New York and the second came out when I was about to start teaching. There was a lull before both moments. A short blip in which I was pathetically antsy.

A time I wanted to speed up.

Anticipation is paradoxical. By wanting something that you can’t have yet, you draw out the waiting. Take a child on the night before Christmas, then put them back. It is not nice to steal children.

Let’s try that again.

Imagine a child on the night before Christmas. They’re so excited to open presents that they stay up all night in anticipation. If they fell asleep it would appear to happen faster, but in their wanting and imagining, they are unable to sleep and thus have to wait in reality for much longer.

Or perhaps consider yourself. Maybe you ordered a package or took a test, and then had to wait. And wait. And wait.

During these times, you can’t help but wish you could just have the results already, you’d just wish time would speed up, but it doesn’t. It just is.

And that’s where I was when I wrote these blogs. I wanted to rip the band-aid off—but I knew I couldn’t afford to lose the moments I’d have in the meantime. I just had to be.

And that’s what got me considering time and how some people say a day dragged on and other people said it flew by. And everyone kept asking me if I was excited or nervous or anything, and I just had to sit there stupidly unsure. Because I was excited, but I wasn’t excited about saying goodbye. And I was nervous, but not about the change, just the fact that the old stuff would be gone.

Now, its three years later and we’ve been experiencing a lot. And we all want that stuff to stop so we can go back to the way things were and just live more like we want to.

But it’s a paradox.

Because the second we let up and relax is the second we lose the progress.

And so, we have to follow the famous American saying; we have to hurry up and wait.

Thanks for reading.