Time.  It is such a fluid phenomenon.  Moments can seemingly stretch for an eternity.  I remember as a child the awful sense that Christmas was simply never going to arrive, because it was three whole days away, and each day felt as though it was moving through molasses.  And yet, time has an equal capacity to feel fleeting, slippery, or elusive.  I am sure that I have had exams in which the “5 minutes remaining” warning was followed immediately by “Stop writing now”.

Of course, time passes in an objectively measurable manner.  The second hand ticks by.  Isotopes decay.  The earth spins, and we see the sun track towards the western horizon.  But it is equally true to say that our individual reality is just the sum of our perceptions.  And to a two-year-old child, a calendar year is literally half of a lifetime!  I am facing my 46th birthday soon, which means that I perceive each year as one forty-sixth of a lifetime. That is only 2.2% - no wonder we feel as though time is passing faster as we grow older!  (If you are interested in the maths of it, by this method of calculation the average Australian passes the perceived halfway point of their life somewhere around the age of 10 or 11!*)

For all its hurry-ups and slow-downs, for all of the perceived variability, time marches on for each of us.

If getting older is both inescapable and universal as a human experience, why do we struggle so much with the concept?  Is this a peculiarity of the 20th and 21st century western culture I have experienced? What about a society in which care of the aged usually happened in the context of the extended family home? Or a culture which didn’t bombard me constantly with unrealistic, idealised images of youth, vigour and beauty? Maybe in these contexts I would have a stronger framework, a more coherent narrative for getting older.

That’s the heart of it, isn’t it? I am getting older. 

I am getting older.

Help me to do it well.