Time After Time (edited)

    If 60 is the new forty, forty must have been the new 60.  My shoulder still hurts.  Obviously, it doesn't really work that way.  The years do tend to tumble by though.  If you hold your mind just right it seems like a kaleidoscope instead of the passing parade.  Those two images actually portray the truth.
    So many of my friends and even people I have yet to meet, say they are taken aback by how brief life seems to be once they reach their 50's or 60's.  It seems like yesterday they were young and full of juice.  But it was a while ago.  There is one feature I like about it.  Waiting for something to happen or to be over now seems so brief.  Like most people I always hated to wait.  I remember as a kid saying, 'I can't wait' for this or that.  My Dad would just say, " I bet you can."  His meaning was; of course,  you're going to wait.  It's up to you how you go about it.  Impatience and anticipation are two very different things.  It was a valuable lesson and has served me very well.  I suppose we all wish we had been more attentive to our parents. I digress.
    What is the truth?  Even with a rudimentary knowledge of physics and implications of higher mathematics;  with a rudimentary familiarity with popular science fiction, we know that time doesn't actually exist. Everything happens at once in a single instant, sorta.  However, we are linear creatures.  We have to perceive things in some sort of order. The passing parade.
    Here's how we perceive time.  We experience it as a percentage of the total time we have experienced.  A month is a lot larger percentage of a five year period than a month is of a fifty year period.  As the total amount of time we have experienced becomes larger the individual days and months and years become smaller in relation and in our perception.  It can become kaleidoscopic.
    I think it would be a real disappointment if we were aware all of the events of our lives and the lives of the world occurred in a single instant. We would be robbed of memory and anticipation.  It is well to remember 50 years was just as long at inception as it is in retrospect..  It's perception and anticipation that make the difference.  Make a difference.
    The years rush in on us even if we know how to perceive them.  I think if you have a brain in your head you'll live as though you're gonna last a century.  However, if you were going to be known for those hundred years by what you did today what would that be?