Hours ticked by as I lay in bed, my mind reeling with excitement, racing in circles like the cars printed on the fabric of my bedsheets. What had once seemed unattainable, impossible even, was just months away. Perhaps the other kids would be jealous, that I, of all people, would make a journey to the single most enchanting place on the globe. In just two short months, I would be in Disneyland.
It was the anticipation that kept me up that night. A thousand wonderings drifting through my mind like the snow outside the window of my bedroom. I wonder what the rides will be like. I wonder if we will meet Mickey. I wonder… Yet it was still so far away. To the mind of a seven-year-old, two months felt as far away as the stars and that all I could do is reach uselessly upwards, watching the twinkling lights appear and disappear behind the silhouette of my fingers. I wished dearly that I could skip forward in time and wake up in February with my bag packed beside my bed. I wished that, for once, the steady sluggish trickle of time would find reason to break its eternal consistency. Closing my eyes finally, I knew that I would remember how it felt to wait when the day eventually came. I knew that I would remember that moment in particular because I had decided that I would.
When I opened my eyes again the expansive LA highways sped by underneath the tires of our rental vehicle. My father was at the wheel, his sunglasses inevitably fixed to his forehead and my mother beside him looking eagerly out the window. My older brother sat next to me pouring over a map of the parks he had found at the hotel. I breathed in the crisp new car smell and looked out at the swaying palm trees and arching overpasses, remembering the night I spent in anticipation. The months between were nothing more than a memory. A fleeting instance of recollection.
Nothing remains of those weeks spent in waiting. To me now, they are a gap in my memory, deemed obsolete by the workings of my mind. That is the power of perception. To look back is easy, but to look forward is agonizing. Seven year old me lived out those two months in full, every passing second rigidly adhering to the clock, but, retrospectively, I decided how long it felt.
This technique of “Skipping Forward” in time was something I did several times when I was a kid. If I didn’t have the patience to wait, I took a snapshot of memory to remember later. When that time finally came the snapshot arrived right on schedule and I could override the time between, forgetting the anticipation or dread that consumed it.
Looking back, it was a fascinating method. Kudos to seven-year-old me for coming up with it. But I don’t use it anymore, and there are several reasons why.
I believe that this technique is something that only a child could come up with. Children perceive time differently than adults, or even teenagers. Two months to a seven-year-old is 2.4% of their life. To a 21-year-old it is 0.8%. Time, for me, is already at 3x speed it was when I was seven. If I look back and compare one second to every bygone moment of my entire life it seems insignificant. Back when I could almost count my years on one hand those seconds felt longer. Minutes felt longer. Days felt longer. Months felt longer. To a newborn infant, every new second is like an eon, but to an elder in his deathbed, each new second is like grains of sand on a beach. At the rate that time is seemingly accelerating it feels like years are slipping through my fingers and it can only get faster. There is a greater need to spend every second intentionally because my mortality is becoming all the more apparent. There are never enough hours in the day. Adult me looks back with jealousy on the months child me carelessly threw away. I’ve learned a different value of time and while, right now, I like the rate it’s going for, it changes every instant that passes.
Nothing excites me as much as it used to either, at least not material things. As life grows in complexity things like Disneyland and new video game consoles feel smaller. But I do not mourn the change. As I’ve gotten older I’ve noticed my perception shift away from its constant future focus and become more interested in the present and the past. I count it as a sign of growth.
Time is constant. Unchanging. Rigid. But our perception of it is fluid and dynamic. It changes as we grow older and I think the best we can do to prepare ourselves is to accept it. If I am to live to my eightieth birthday, the years will pass like seconds and I can’t control that. But, I think, in the end, I don’t mind.
First!
Second!