Hey all... well life is fine, nothing really interesting to report, even if people did take much notice. There is an MPH writing contest which I wrote for. I was feeling 'write'-ish, but it seems that I was just rambling about life again. The theme for the contest was Time: How can a few seconds seem like an eternity, and yet years can pass by so quickly? Here's what I wrote:

The traffic light was red. I ground my teeth as time seemed to slow to a crawl, keeping me stuck here in the car. The sun was an indistinct circle behind a wall of haze. Heat simmered off vehicles around me, the waves somehow taunting me. Cars grumbled as fellow drivers waited for what seemed like an eternity for the light to turn green. The air-conditioning blew almost gently at me, teasing me, caressing my face with a cool breeze. All of it was starting to irritate me. Finally, the light turned green. I zipped off into the distance, speeding just a tad bit to make up for the time I felt I had lost. I cursed the people who set the timer for the traffic light, feeling as if they were just out to get me. I looked down, checking the time. Less than three minutes had passed. I blinked, surprised.

Later on in the day, I sat lazily on a bench. I was out in my neighborhood, home at last after a tedious day at college. The sun was now hidden behind the clouds. The air was much cooler, and a breeze blew across the field in front of me, some leaves being picked up and tossed around in a strangely graceful dance. Children ran around happily screaming as they played tag with each other. I felt content and happy as clouds floated by at a leisurely pace. Life could not get much better than this, I thought. I wanted to enjoy this time as much as possible, unmoving, unthinking. My mind emptied. It filled abruptly as I realized that the sun was setting already. The air was getting colder as the ground lost its heat. The children had gone home, tired and happy from a day of play. The clouds were an interesting shade of orange and purple. I was surprised at how fast time flew by me. How could this be? At one time, I was stuck in traffic forever. Now, time seemed to have laughed at me and just skipped a few hours. Time flies when you’re having fun.

The next evening, I was again sitting on the bench. This time, I thought about something: How does time seem fast at one point, and very slow at the other? How can a few minutes seem like forever, while a few hours could just skip my mind? How does life change from a very quick series of experiences, to the slow development of our selves? I thought back on the situation I was in: When I was in traffic, I felt that time was crawling. When I was enjoying myself, time flew by in a blink. I also thought about my childhood; the minutes, hours, and days seemed to crawl by when I was young. I used to complain about boredom all the time. Now, the days seem to pass so quickly that I find myself a little lost at times on the things that I have to complete. I pondered on this strange aspect of time. It seemed there were two ways of looking at this changing importance of time. One was that time could have relative meanings for different situations. Another was that our own minds perceive time differently as we grow older.
The passage of time feels different in different situations. As time is a human concept, and to humans everything can be relative, then time is relative. When one is rushing to work, time is very short, and whatever waiting one has to do will seem like forever because one will experience delays intensely as one counts the time left to reach a destination. When one is basking in the glory of the day, time seems to have little meaning but for the change in scenery. Nothing truly affects a person who does not have to worry about time, does it? It all comes down to whether a person notices that time passes. Children seem to have an acute sense of the passing of time. I have heard of and experienced a child’s life of waiting for time to pass. Each minute could seem like an agony to pass. It could explain children’s short attention spans.
My mind wandered back to the years that have passed in my life. Nineteen years is not as long a time as it seems. In primary school, I had always perceived time as a crawling snail, sluggishly bringing itself to new days at such a slow pace. A thirty minute class seemed like a year; now that I am in college, classes are two hours long for each subject, and somehow I find that the sun sets so much earlier than I thought it would. It seemed that as more time gets absorbed into our brains, as we perceive more passing of time, a certain amount of time becomes small relative to the time recorded in our brains. If we were a minute old, that minute would be everything for us. Each second in that minute adds so much to the minute of our lives. Now that I am nineteen years old, a minute seems like a small thing. In thinking about this, I envy the child that I was before.

Children live their lives to the second. They experience every second of their lives, and do not take time for granted. Every second they have registers subconsciously, and so they get bored easily. Patience may not be an absolute virtue: Now that I have learned patience, it seems that most of the time I am not aware of time passing. I do not live the seconds of my life like the child I used to be. I now wait for time to pass, focusing on what the passing of time brings instead of reveling in the time that is passing. Time is precious: How much could we have done if we lived every moment of our lives, instead of letting it pass in waiting for more substantial things? Does every moment passing really register in our minds now? I think that most people would rather spend their time doing something productive. What they don’t realize is that doing nothing could be doing something as well. There are few today who can truly enjoy the passing of time.

I shake my head sadly as I think about the many people today who can not appreciate what it is like to sit down and do nothing but watch time pass. To them, time is a very limited resource; best spent doing something that will benefit them in the end. It takes a different kind of mindset to be able to see that doing nothing could be beneficial to oneself. That mindset is that of a child, and that of a mature person. I believe that it is possible to live life both as a child and as a mature person: Live every moment of life as it comes instead of letting it pass by, and use one’s mature thinking to keep oneself from boredom. There is a child in every one of us; it just takes a lot of serious thinking to find it.

And voila! Ramblings. Comments yeah if you have any ;)