An aged perspective on life through the cycles of time

Hi neighbors. Another month bites the dust and time moves on to whatever comes next. We have always heard older people say that time moves faster the older you get. I don't think time moves faster. I think we start recognizing the passage of cycles.

As children, a single hour would loom before us seemingly endlessly while we waited for time to do some thing we wanted to do, or go some place where we wanted to go play. We soon discovered that the hour we were allowed to do what we anticipated, disappeared quickly in time.

In our youth we couldn't see the cycle of an hour from both viewpoints. We couldn't appreciate that an hour cycle was the same loop whether we were enjoying it or enduring it. It's with age that we learn to comprehend the concept that time is not simply short journeys from the beginning of one point in time to its ending.

As we mature days appear to be shorter because we can see at sun rise that the day will unfold as it usually does. Not that there are no surprises, but the cycle of sunrise to sunset spreads out before us more easily comprehensible than we may have understood it before. The wider our understanding of cycles, the less we get tied into smaller cycles of time frames of less than an hour, a morning or afternoon.

We lose the feeling of apprehension over getting to the next break, finishing the morning, finding time for lunch, completing the day's assignments, getting to the afternoon meetings on time. Our work days are broken into short term goals that we exhaust ourselves trying to reach. Like steeplechase race horses, we are constantly jumping hurdles, unable to see past the current fence. If we could look ahead we would see that there are more jumps ahead before the day ends, and that the hurdle immediately in front of us is not the obstacle to end all obstacles.

Like the other jumps between us and the end of the day, the next jump is simply one of a cycle, part of a pattern that will find its own way to resolve itself.

At the end of each day, looking back at the hurdles you have successfully passed, and those where you faltered, will make the efforts seem more a part of a greater whole.

Weekly cycles pass by with few markers. Mondays don't open to a looming black hole of a train of work days leading to a far distant weekend. First it is Monday morning, and from our work area we can look over the fence between today and tomorrow and realize tomorrow is closer than we think. Before we know it, Friday is done and we are facing our weekend.

So it is with months, seasons and years. Whatever length of a cycle you think about, in hindsight you can see it all went as it should.

It is learning to look calmly forward to future cycles with the same freedom from anxiety as you look back on past cycles that leads to maturity.

Doesn't it seem odd that we have to become so old to learn how to deal with time?