Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Speed of Life (see what I did there)

It's scary how fast life goes by these days. a day in a blink of an eye, a week in two. A year sometimes feels like you went to sleep on the 31st of December, only to wake up on the 31st of December a year later with the vague recollections of a very vivid dream.

I recently watched a video on Youtube explaining the whole "life is like a roll of toilet paper - it gets faster as you get nearer towards the end" quote. New experiences are always so vivid in our memory. The "firsts" of our lives happened in our childhood, making everyday when you were a kid seem like a journey, the littlest things traumatic, the tiniest surprises making you estatic.

But when we start to grow up, "firsts" become rare. There's not many firsts left for us to do. Or, more often than not, we choose not to take anymore "firsts". Because living inside your comfort zone is so damn comfortable right? Taking risks is.. well risky (brilliant vocab I have today), and being safe will guarantee contentment.

But contentment isn't happiness.. it's not that true, exhilarating happiness you experience in those brief and precious moments of your life. Why do people strive to be happy? Because it feels good I guess. But see, feeling good doesn't feel good if you feel good all the time (I can't help that my brain is coming up with such amazing synonyms). Happiness can only be truly appreciated if you've experienced hardship and stress and sadness and anger on the road to happiness.

Life is short because time flies. Time flies because what is time? It's all in your head. A set of mutual memories shared between a few people. Our brain records these memories and learns from them. If you don't do anything knew, the brain doesn't have to do much work to process what's just happened. That memory will just drift away and be lost among a whole swamp of murky happenings. Only your firsts remain vivid inside your head. They're milestones of your life, right?

To make time fly, easy. Do the same thing every single day. Soon it'll be almost robotic. You'll wake up to find yourself at work, not remembering how you got dressed, brushed your teeth and walked in a daze to the office. But it must have happened because here you are, exactly where you've been everyday at this time. Are you happy? No. But are you sad? No, you're not sad either. You're content.

But to make time slow down? To remember the vivid recollection that was last night, the exhilarating rush of adrenaline that was last night, the uncontrollable smile of true happiness that's the result of last night; well that's a bit harder. How can you constantly keep yourself on your toes? Doing new things, taking more "firsts" and creating more "lasts", making life feel longer and richer and fuller and grander...

Oh man I'm so hungry..

3 comments:

  1. Reading new things you write makes my days richer! :)

    P.S. Hope you enjoyed the leftovers

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  2. I did! The tendons were amazing first thing in the morning.

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  3. Hey it lets me comment on Windows Explorer but not Chrome... :/

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