Where does the time go? I was out shopping yesterday and all around were signs of Christmas. OK so the streets haven’t got around to hanging up their pretty lights yet, and the shops aren’t playing the familiar Christmas songs, but you can tell that it’s not going to be long before they do. I don’t feel ready for Christmas just yet – but having been forced to think about it, there aren’t that many weeks left. How is this possible?
This should be the après-vacation period, the time when we look back fondly about spending time at the beach (once we managed to get out of the motorway tailbacks), and polishing up the remainder of our suntan, but apparently there’s no time for that anymore! Time is going so fast that it really feels as if you should bring down the boxes of Christmas decorations when you are putting away the suitcases you used on your summer holiday.
At work it often feels as if it’s no sooner Monday then its Friday again and I’ve managed to get nowhere near the amount of work done that I’d hoped. The weekends fly over in a similar pattern. The only time that seems to crawl is that spent waiting for some form of public transport!
Old people used to complain about there being more time to take things easy in the past, that things went at a slower pace. I’m not sure how that could be when we are living in an age of instant this and automatic that, and yet there still aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish everything that needs to be done. Was it really a slower pace back then, or is it more that we expect more from our lives nowadays? Or in the case of Christmas, is it that commercialism and the need for stores to have a good Christmas profit margin makes us start thinking about the season earlier than we really need to be? Whether it’s an illusion or not, the fact remains that time is flying past and there seems to be no slowing it down.