I spent some time remembering my childhood today. Nothing in particular, just how fast time has gone by.
When I was a boy, summers felt endless. Days were measured not in hours but in adventures — riding bikes until the streetlights came on, bare feet on hot pavement, the screen door slamming behind me as I ran out again. The world was small and huge all at once. Small enough to fit inside my neighborhood, huge enough that I thought I’d never reach the end of it. I didn’t know anything about time then, except that I had all of it.
Then adolescence came and time suddenly sped up and slowed down in the strangest way. I was in a hurry to be older, to be taken seriously, to get out and get on with it — and yet every day of waiting felt like a year. Everything mattered so much: friendships, first jobs, first loves, figuring out who I was when no one was telling me who to be. Looking back, that was the age of becoming. Awkward, restless, full of wanting, full of promise. We thought we were invincible, and maybe we needed to think that.
Adulthood didn’t ask permission, it just arrived. Work, responsibility, bills, building a life. One day you’re learning the ropes, the next day people are looking to you for answers. There were long stretches where I wasn’t thinking about time at all because I was too busy living inside it — raising a family, making mistakes, doing my best, learning that opportunity rarely shows up with a sign that says “opportunity.” Sometimes it looks like hard work. Sometimes it looks like staying when it would be easier to leave. Sometimes it looks like saying yes when you’re scared. I wonder now if I took advantage of every chance. Probably not every one. But I took enough of the right ones.
And now here I am, a senior. Damn… what happened? The boy on the bike is still in here somewhere, I can still feel him. Only now I understand what he couldn’t — that time was never slow, we were just too young to hear it moving. If I could talk to him, I wouldn’t tell him to hurry. I’d tell him to pay attention. To notice it all. The fact that I’m sitting here remembering and feeling grateful for the whole, messy, beautiful run of it tells me I did pay attention more than I thought. Fast as it went, it was mine and I’m grateful.
“Since my youth, God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds. Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation.” – Psalms 71:17-18
Being About The Journey 