Time Flies

Today is my parents wedding anniversary. They’ve been married for 37 years today. By today’s standards that’s a really long time. They have three children (me and my two sisters – one older and one younger) and one grandson. Growing up they were an amazing example of how a REAL marriage works. They love each other dearly but their life together has not been without it’s challenges…. who’s is??? What I give them huge props for is for working through all the challenges they’ve faced as a team. 37 years ago they committed their lives to each other – in good times and bad and all that good stuff. And they’ve seen it all. Yet here they stand still together and still happy and still very much in love. I’ve known all my life (even with how much they get on each others nerves) that they were a perfect match. They rely on each other way more than either one of them actually realizes.

What truly astounds me though is that when I think about 37 years… I think about that being a really long time. But in reality, I have a feeling that for them it’s passed in the blink of an eye. I have a feeling they look back on the day they were married and think wow… that wasn’t all that long ago. And really… it wasn’t all that long ago.

As I get older I’ve started to realize that time actually seems to speed up. This year I turned 32. This year will mark the 5th anniversary of moving to DC and starting my job and life here. But I can’t for the life of me figure out where all the time went. I still feel like I’m 27 getting ready to make the biggest decision of my life and move really far away from everything I know and everyone I love and truly break out on my own. I honestly can’t believe that was 5 years ago. Every year feels like it goes a little faster. Logically I know that it’s all the same… time really passes at the same rate every day and every month and every year. But our PERCEPTION of time can be drastically altered by the things going on in our lives…

When we were kids it seemed like it was taking ages to hit those major milestones… like becoming a teenager, starting highschool, learning to drive, falling in love… as we get older I think we take a lot of that anticipation and waiting for granted. We really want things to SLOW down and yet our perception is that things are speeding up. Suddenly you’re 30 or have a couple of kids and you don’t even know where all the time went. It’s like you blinked and suddenly your life changed. And somehow, in the middle of all this we start to feel like we don’t have the TIME to do all the things we said we were going to do before we ‘got old’.

We all know what it’s like to have had one of “those days” where the day seems to drag on forever and you think you’re never going to get to go home. Then at the end of the week you’re not done with all the things on your to-do list and you wonder where the time went. At the end of a year you look back on all the things that happened… how LONG the year was and how many intense things happened…and yet you’re stunned to realize it’s been a year since you saw that friend or took that vacation or made that big decision.

Here’s the thing… TIME hasn’t changed… time is always the same. But we get so caught up in all the minuscule moments in our lives, in all the things that don’t really matter as much in the long run that we miss out on those big moments. We need to MAKE the time for the things that really matter. We need to be consciously aware of living our lives to the best of our abilities and not taking anything for granted. Noone knows how much time they really have… so we shouldn’t waste a minute of it.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about today as I think back on the 37 years of my parents marriage. They definitely taught us to live our lives and not take things for granted. They made sure that we knew how to do that. But, somedays I wonder if they remembered to do that for themselves too. To live their lives they way they dreamed them. To do all the things they wanted to do. They’ve had 37 years of building a beautiful family and home and partnership with each other. I’d like to see them take the next 37 years to enjoy every single minute with each other and make the time – for whatever they want.