Time flies, my mother used to say when she was about my age now. Bill Bryson figured out why. It has to do with the fact that as you get older you do less new things and your experiences today are very similar to those of yesterday. If you were to travel a lot or do a completely different job, time would also slow down again. I think it also has to do with how much fun you have in life. Time flies when you have fun, as an old Dutch proverb says.
I can still remember my mother standing in front of the mirror combing her long, thin, gray hair before putting it up in a bun. Suddenly she was bursting into tears, well, sobbing softly. Since I was there, I asked what was up. She swallowed her grief, looked at me and said, “I actually wanted to go to my parents for the weekend and then I suddenly realized that they are no longer alive. I hadn’t thought about that at all.”
I wish I could write now that I got up and hugged her, but we weren’t like that back then. Only much later did hugs become more commonplace for us, still cautious, but that could also be due to me, because I don’t always know what the other person wants and I always look for a certain attunement in the contact, especially with men it’s complicated, but that aside.
The point is that time flies like a buzzard in the air, which can very well linger for a long time in a fixed place and then suddenly disappear. The moment has passed and will never come back, as everything passes. I will come back to that later. In any case, that flying time came to mind because tomorrow is already the shortest day and Sunday is already Christmas and I’m not ready for that yet.
Ate Vegter, December 20, 2022
ate vegter 