Time in Retrospect

St. Mary’s Cemetery – Burlington, N.J.

Seems like the changeover from wintertime to spring and the start of baseball season were only yesterday. At least it does to me. Not that I’m complaining as usual, but time sure has picked up its pace. That’s the consequence of growing older, whereby youngsters can’t wait for their next birthday and the year-end holidays to arrive, which, for them, take forever.

It’s all relative. For a child of 10, a year is 10% of their lifetime. For a person who is 50, a year is only 2% of theirs. To delve further into this analogy, 10% of 365 days is 36.5, or a little over 5 weeks, while 2% of a year is 7.3 days.

So, with that in mind, 365 days for an old-timer like me, assuming I’m 50—I’ll not admit to how much over that, however—feel like they pass 5 times faster than when I was 10.  No wonder the years are flying by so quickly.

Now we’re at Memorial Day Weekend in the States already, the start of the official summer season for 2018. At this rate, July 4th, baseball’s all-star game on July 17, and the dog days of August will have shot by before we know it; and Labor Day Weekend will be jumping off the calendar.

I’m definitely not looking forward to the drastic heat the summer brings, and hoping this year will be cooler, but not betting on it. Sweating and feeling wrung out are the only parts of this scenario for which I’ll be happy their passing is 5 or 6 times faster than when I was a kid. That’s as close to my present age as I’ll allow.

Aside from all this mathematical hoopla, worrying about how fast time seems to be going should be changed to my giving thanks for being able to see and experience another day, something that those, for whom this upcoming holiday weekend memorializes, didn’t get the chance to do after their paying the ultimate price for serving our country and protecting our freedom.

Instead of listing all the statistics of war, how many have died this year, the carnage spent, and the thought of future conflicts during these fragile times we live in, I would like to just take the time out from my constant complaining and dedicate this year’s Memorial Day Weekend journal entry generally to all the individuals who lost their lives while in the military or performing a public service for protecting our rights and well-being. Law-enforcement officials, firefighters, and everyday citizens caught in between the crossfire of war and destruction are included in this memorial.

For the past twenty-two years, I’ve tried to pay tribute annually in my writing to the aforementioned brave and unselfish heroes, skipping a year now and then for whatever reason. The entries from 1996 through 2014 are found here, 2016’s addendum is here, and last year’s here.

In closing, perhaps the changing of the seasons in a progressively quicker fashion is not so bad after all, considering those whose time had halted abruptly without forewarning, not living to have the good fortune of complaining about how fast time flies eventually.

Thanks for stopping by and for your continued support.