“Today’s the day! Today’s the day!” I remember hearing this phrase all throughout my life. It’s always delivered with great zeal and excitement and there’s a good reason why we’re glad for that day, “Today.” When we’re young, time goes Ariston and on and on. It seems neverending, but why did we think this way? It’s simple really, because as Einstein put it, everything is relative. A year seems like a long time to a baby because a year is a large portion of their life as they know it. Whereas to an old person, a year is just another fraction; a tiny piece of the great puzzle that is their life. In a contest to double one’s age, a baby would win hands down against someone already in primary school. So, why is time this way?

We’re constantly comparing things with ourselves whether we know it or not and not even time is able to evade our inspection. It never fails to get drawn in like light to a black hole from the immense force generated by our scrutiny (Well, nothing much can be done to create distance from our scrutiny anyway). You could count the pressure of this gigantic force from the numbers of devices strapped to the population’s wrists. So, time has no chance.

Time is abstract. It can be everywhere yet nowhere. But still, disconcerting as it is, abnegating its fleeting property is the worst thing one could do. Back then, a minute seemed like such a long time. When I was more impressionable, I never took much notice of time. It wasn’t seen as a luxury much like it became in the follow up to today. It was always something that was just there and never something that needed to be filled. Back then, time could have happily existed as an empty beaker and I wouldn’t have minded, but as more and more time passed me by, I came to realise that I should give it more consideration; that I should care about obtaining a more comfortable saddle to place over this turbulent and tidelike beast that refuses to be tamed; refuses to yield to man.

I used to find myself at times wishing the days would pass by even faster. I would wish for a special formula to spontaneously come about and be applied to me only, whereby every passing second of mine in the world was doubled and became the equivalent of two in everyone else’s world. Yes, this would make life move along more quickly. Of course, back then I wanted time to move along invariably because I wanted to be older. Didn’t we all at some stage? There’s always that abject view of adults having all the freedom in the world to do anything they wanted. This was what I wanted too at certain ages in my childhood (Little did I know that to keep your freedom and enjoy life, a part of your freedom must, more often than not, be sold away to a job). For the last couple of weeks especially, I’ve been very much like a child, handling time with my own adultised version of kid gloves. I wanted today to arrive so quickly. I found myself thinking again how awesome it would be if humans were designed to have a true autopilot function. We could shut ourselves down and set an alarm so that our mindless body could continue on its own the way it normally would otherwise and at some prescribed time later we’d awaken to the sound of our mind’s alarm, to enjoy that moment as though it had arrived in the space of a heart’s flutter.

There was a lot of time I was willing to give up. I would happily have gone to sleep one night two weeks ago and slept all the way, only to reawaken today. It’s tough to have to wait for an eagerly anticipated event to arrive. When I was young and watching the end credits of my favourite cartoons, all I could think about for that moment was how long I’d have to wait till the start of the next episode. But that day always came. The day when I no longer had to wait would always arrive. The moment I’d been waiting for always arrived. And the funny thing is, at that exact moment, it reinstates in my mind all the reasons why I once felt that I couldn’t wait. It reminds me that it was actually really good waiting for that moment to arrive, because it allowed me a juncture to have great conversations and learn many new things. The act of enduring that stretch of time gave me my own little special and personal stretch of time to think about how I’d appreciate that moment when it arrived; to enjoy it like nothing else in the world existed. Not even time.

I am so glad for today and for this stretch of time allocated to me, for my moment will finally arrive in about six and a half hours. I can’t hardly wait. And I do really mean that literally too.