Ticking Time

I realized when I was about five minutes away from pulling into my parking garage this morning that I drove the entire way here with the radio off.

That’s something that I don’t do. I love music and I love listening to music (in fact, I’m listening to Hotel California on my iPod right now!) but, for some reason the silence this morning felt right.

I started recalling all of the things that I was thinking about on my drive in this morning: Frisbee from the weekend and how good I felt on Sunday. The things a few of my friends said to me after my last game – mud wrestling, rain storms, drunken Frisbee, friends both new and old, sober Frisbee…and then I started to think about how fast time really does go by. I remember thinking that time was moving so slowly and that I’d never get through this part of my life. That I’d be stuck in this blackish nightmare with shovels for hands, trying to courageously dig myself out. Yet, I just realized how long ago this all started.

I don’t know if anyone ever did stupid things like this, but I remember being quite small as a child and anxiously excited for the day that my feet would reach the floor sitting in the front seat of my moms car. Yes, can you imagine that? A four year old in the front seat of a car. My mom lived dangerously – she’d probably be reported to child services for that now-a-days. I also remember have a little stool in the bathroom that I stood on to brush my teeth. I would draw imaginary lines on the mirror and think about how cool it was going to be to stand without the stool and be that tall.

Why is it when you’re a kid all you want to do is grow up and when you’re an adult all you want to be is a kid? I keep wishing for time to go by faster and then I realize how fast it really has gone. I’m 25 years old and I still remember things from being five or six. I remember snuggling up with my dad because I was afraid of the dark and my mom getting super angry for him letting me sleep in their bed – I remember telling my parents, when I was six years old, that I would sleep in my own bed when I was ten. It was like I had decided that I when I was ten that all the scary things hidden under beds and within closets would disappear upon my reaching double digits. I can still smell the cologne of my first kiss. I can still remember my first heart break and sometimes, I can still feel the pain from that rejection. I keep reminiscing on the old and sometimes I think it prevents me from preparing for the new. Sometimes I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me, “Sam, you’re a retard” when I remember the stupid things that I’ve done in my past.

As always, I had a sudden realization that time is way too precious to worry about this or that. Again, referring to Ann Lamot, there was a part when she was talking to her best friend while she was trying on a dress. She asks her friend, “Does this dress make my hips look big?” and her friend responded, “I don’t think you have that kind of time.” That statement has been sitting with me, fragrant in the back of my mind, tickling my noses with its scent. We really don’t have time to worry about such frivolity. What’s the point in being stressed about things that you don’t have the power to change. Time is against all of us – we never get any younger – and instead of worrying about what we can’t change, we should use that energy to worry about the things we can.