on time ii
the older i get the more i feel like my perception of time warps. somedays the future feels like it is leagues away. somedays the past feels like it happened in an instant. day to day feels like it crawls at snails pace. year to year feels like it flies at the speed of light.
yesterday i grabbed dinner with a few friends (as most hangouts in my city revolve around food or drinks), and a friend was attempting to recall the last time we hung out. so much had happened. my friend moved from the city after a long summer. i signed a new apartment lease in a new neighborhood. my life has changed. so little had happened. i worked. i slept. my life remained the same. it was three weeks ago.
everytime someone asks me: how are you?, i can never instantly answer. i've heard that this question is just a polite way to start a conversation. but i cannot help but be introspective, feeling as if that question is an inquiry to my own well-being. eventually, i just result to some default answer of fine, well, poor like its some questionaire i'm filling out. sometimes i'll elaborate how i actually feel emotionally, particularly with those that i can be more vulnerable to. more often than not, however, i'll answer with some form of the mundane phrase: oh nothing's happened.
i've realized that this is a direct result of my perception of time and what is truly meaningful. inherently as one grows older, one experiences less and less novel events. i can vividly recall my first day at my first job working. what the temperature was like outside. who i tutored. the voice of my boss as she taught me the basics. i can't even recall what i did yesterday at work without. the same amount of time. one more impactful than the other.
in a city full of stimulus, sometimes i feel trapped. a few years ago when i moved in and the city was still recovering from the after effects of covid, i journaled about how little has changed both day to day but also month to month. hardly anything changed. in the moment, everything felt so slow and mundane. yet even during that time period when asked, it felt like time had past in a blink of an eye. i couldn't answer with anything other than alright. i felt as if the city sped up and left me behind. when there is no meaning, life feels prosaic. its slows down in the present, only to leave everyone behind as the years fly by leaving nothing in its wake. the mind holds memories of days we've missed. what is worth remembering?
to be frank, i'm not sure of the point of all this. maybe it is to appreciate the smaller moments in life. the subway into the city. the people watching as i eat alone. maybe it is to reframe my perspective and reframe my thoughts. the new recipe i made a few days ago maybe seen as an accomplishment. the new pr at the gym may warrant a celebration of sorts. in one of my favourite movies About Time, the mc and his father have the power to time travel. (hopefully spoiler free enough), at some point in the movie the father tells the son to live life twice: first with everyday's tensions and worries, and second noticing how sweet the world can be.
maybe the answer to the inevitable question how are you? lies somewhere in deriving meaning in life, whatever it is. father time is inevitable.
be good,
simple