For Those Thirty and Up

[xxlt]

One songwriter put it this way:

The days get shorter every year
For me to get drunk it takes a lot more beer
The things people say, I don't really hear
And I don't really know what to say

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I tend to think poets/songwriters say it best, so I hesitate to comment further, but since I didn't write the above assessment...

I tell everyone I see with a child not to blink - it is astonishing how fast a child grows up. Which reminds me of another lyric -

http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/MALVINA/mr175.htm


You can see all of Malvina's wonderful song at the link above but the words I was thinking of were:

Turn around and your two, turn around and your four
Turn around and your a young man going out my front door
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Again, it is astonishing how fast a child you are raising reaches adulthood - at least it was for me. From the child's perspective I think it is more exciting because so much is a novelty - and thus time my seem to never drag. Even things that I find rather boring now, like watching a baseball game, were exciting for me as a kid because of the novelty of each pitch. While every pitch still holds multiple possible outcomes, somewhere along the line I hit a saturation point where it just wasn't as exciting anymore - and I guess I sort of envy the people who can still watch a game on he edge of their seat. It is paradoxical how when we are bored, times seems to drag, and as an adult we have seen and done so much more so it is hard to find novel experiences, and yet as an adult time seems not to pass more slowly with this boredom but more quickly. The just completed passage of time from October 15 to Feb 15 was as rapid as any I can remember in spite of the fact that I had relatively few new experiences, wasn't terribly busy, and was not raising a child. My life is, honestly, rather dull at the moment, and yet it sails by seemingly faster than ever. Very puzzling...
(Oh, and I am 50.)