“Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.” ~ Jean de La Bruyère
You can say “amen” or “ouch” to that quote. I’ve been chalking up the feeling that time is slipping through my fingers faster and faster to having another birthday and a lot of things to do, while ignoring an uneasy recollection of my grandparents frequently commenting about how time was “speeding up.” Was I just experiencing another “old people” symptom? Entirely possible, but then I started hearing the same comment from my adult children, and other people of various ages, and that made me wonder.
Come to find out, it’s true. The earth actually is spinning faster right now. So much faster that July 9 was about 1.3 to 1.6 milliseconds shorter than the standard 24 hours. According to the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), that was the shortest day ever recorded using atomic clocks. It’s still not a lot, but it might be enough to explain this collective sensation that time is shorter than it used to be.
There’s also the argument that time is merely an artificial social construct, and there’s some validity to that, too (especially when you’re trying to find an excuse for being late).
Having birthdays, seeing grandchildren suddenly outgrow you, the passage of a season of life, and milestone events like anniversaries make us more conscious of the passage of time. Spending the summer semester taking a class on death, dying and grief has probably added to my hyperawareness that the clock is ticking and time is short.
It’s easy to let anxiety creep in when it comes to time, even though it’s pointless to fret about. Instead, I’m trying to make the most of every moment, and that’s good advice for us all.
