Can we talk?

Fall Flies In

         Oh, dear, it's that time of year that goes by so fast. Why does fall, which isn't officially here yet, go so much faster than other times of the year? It's always been that way. Labor Day hits and the school year starts, then quickly high school football is over for the year, THE holidays are here, and then the long slow, cold winter. Spring speeds up a little, then summer slips by, then another fall races in and goes too quickly.

         Time is so . . . flaky, for lack of a better word. When you're waiting for your doctor's appointment, 30 minutes seems like hours. Thirty minutes on your lunch time races by. A minute at a stop light seems like forever. The time my head hits the pillow until the alarm goes off seems like seconds.

         Labor Day signals the unofficial end of summer. (Old school: no wearing of white after Labor Day.) There are so many things going on in the fall. I suppose if time is relative, and there are so many activities, that it only seems fast. But it's been that way since I was much, much younger. Pumpkins to pick, decorations for one holiday after another, presents to buy, plays and concerts to attend or to practice for. As we get older, we have to add in doctor appointments for self or children.

         We can say it's our fast paced lives, this modern world, etc. But the truth is every generation feels the same way. Thomas Jefferson's daughter wrote a letter complaining about how much faster the world was moving, and that there wasn't enough time to relax as in her youth, and that was the early 1800's! Wordsworth wrote the "world is too much with us, late and soon" . . . He too complained our worldly cares made life speed by as we get older. John Donne complained of the same thing in the 1600's.

         So it's just the human condition. It's not us, not our world, not our generation. It's not that the world has changed and moving so much faster. That's just the human experience. I suppose if we didn't feel like time was fleeting, we wouldn't be human.

         So I will try to relish these days and make the most of them. And I will know that I am human after all if the time flies by.