Sunday, December 23, 2007

Time

I sat in my office last night forcing myself to get through writing copious notes about my little charges and playing games with myself to get through it- so many notes before getting another pecan praline thing etc, and I started musing about time. It felt like just last week when I had last been tortured by the mundane reality of the writing of these notes, but in fact it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, before I went to DC, before the dumb numb foot thing escalated, before so many other things that now seem remote because they are now a part of my daily reality. Then I started thinking about how I will be back to work truly full time as of Jan 2 when I am on service for the first time in over a year. That was when it got truly curious because if I have issues sorting out the passage of time over the past month, forget the past year. I barely remember last Christmas, yet the one the year before is still clear in my mind. I went to New York just after Christmas last year and while I did my best to put away all of my decorations before going when I returned to my house in March there were still tell tale bows and Christmas candles throughout my house. Alas those things were still there when I packed everything up for the great remodel further pushing the issue of time and how we mark its passing. We think of time as one of the truly objective things in this world. We mark the time and date of important events so that we can remember them. We, or at least I, live by my watch so that I can keep to a schedule. However, once it becomes the past our mind plays tricks with the now elusive memory of time and that once truly ordered, objective time somehow gets marked subjectively and ranked based on importance. Funny how that happens. Curious how the fact that I got no sleep last night has lead to these observations. Oh well, time goes on.

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