Some days I feel like I went to bed in March and woke up to find it’s July. The following year. ‘Dad, why does time go so slow when we’re waiting for friends to arrive, and so fast when they are with us?’ is the classic childhood (and probably adulthood) question.
I have no answers other than time is both fixed and fluid. It is constant while how we perceive it is not. Time is relative. An 80 year old oak tree is still considered young. An 80 year old book or pencil is not.
A modern maxim says, ‘People overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade.’ We can probably substitute day and month for year and decade and still maintain the same principle.
The thing about us, the projects we are involved in, the organisations we manage or work for, the change we seek to see is that they happen within time and while everything around it is also changing. Perhaps that’s why the modern maxim holds true. We overestimate in the short term because we forget we are not in a vacuum. And we underestimate because we forget about the power of consistency and compounding actions. And we tend to give up too easily.
Time marches on. What do want to do with your next decade?
And no post about time would be complete with Mary Oliver:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and previous life?
0 Comments