If Michael’s craft store was any indicator, every holiday post the fourth of July began at that very time. Commercialism abound, once the American flag was outsold or packed away? You could be sure a cornucopia filled with summer squash could be found as easily as a glow-in-the-dark skeleton or a floppy red Santa hat. Even truer, the latter might take up half the store by September, jumping right over the two prior red-letter days. Who cares about ghosts and gratitude, anyway?
I don’t need to further my previous tangent about the ridiculous amounts of money our nation spends annually during the holidays – enough to solve the hunger problem many times over – especially considering I willingly participate to a degree. Still, gross. But that’s capitalism, folks. And not the point of this blog entry, anyway.
The old adage about days being long but years being short is stupid true. Seems I had two babies, a house and a hubs just yesterday. And while I rent a room from a friend, my children are 29 & 31 years old, and I’m happily single, time has obviously passed, and with it a scar or two. Thankfully, though, there has been far more enrichment to my overall life experience than not. And I guess I choose what I focus on there.
But time moving along as quickly as it appears to causes me to prickle with both frustration and excitement. Losing the days, the years, the decades for the consolation prize of a fat piece of luggage filled with oldies and hangers-on doesn’t exactly seem fair. But, hopefully, if we’ve done any observation at all over the years, we end up with that esteemed thing called wisdom. Hopefully.
Whether or not time is a human construct rather than a universal principle is a matter of continued scientific debate, but regardless it is most certainly in the eyes of the beholder and is both subjective and influenced. In this I’m finding that the treadmill of life I’ve walked so many times before, assists in my perspective. Every day is the same. Even my weekends.
So, this is where I’m making a choice. I could get depressed at the lack of purpose of it all – which I’ve certainly done before, on more than one occasion, as point of fact. Or I could direct my attention elsewhere – find a hobby, meet some people, seek out a way to make life interesting. Choices, choices.
And in the vein of the latter of the two, here I am to gift a bit of wisdom, cheesy as it may be. These long days and short years? Blink of an eye. Just a blink. But time is an ouroboros, eating its own tail, always behind us and always ahead. And every day – every fucking day, we stand at the precipice of another adventure. Just for the doing. Just for the being. And just for the living of it all.
