The Acceleration Of My Merry- Go- Round (IV)

The Acceleration Of My Merry- Go- Round (IV) - Well, there I found myself at the drop of a hat turning 50 years with one major question on my mind which was 'How and where in the world has all that time (half a century!) slipped to?' No worries, I was not having a melt- down, nor was I bound for a crisis of any other kind, but I do admit I was downright flabbergasted as to how I could possibly have grown so old that quickly. After all, was I not all that long ago rather anxiously anticipating my first milestone and therefore dumbfounded over a simple yellow package of Wrigley chewing gum being in fact all that I had received from my biological mother on my 10th birthday? Was I not more or less recently 19 3/4 still and exceedingly impatient to finally approach my 20s? Was I not only a short while ago welcoming my 30s silently sitting all by myself while feeding off lots of memories from my grand birthday party a year prior? Was I not just lavishly celebrating my 40th birthday amidst my family with my sweet late grandmother still around? Unbelievable, but there I was now all of a sudden at 50 - Boom! Again, that blunt awakening was neither accompanied by any type of agony, depression, frustration or anxieties but clearly by an overwhelming extent of awe instead. Slowly but surely, my inner clock has been gathering speed, and suddenly it very much feels like it has begun to run so fast that catching my breath is in fact becoming luxurious. Take a full week, for instance. In my teens, such a period would still appear to be dragging on forever. A good decade later, it would miraculously still last for quite a while. Throughout my thirties, eight days of short vacation time, say in the middle of the school year, I was still able to enjoy as a fairly medium length stretch. About ten years later, though, it would start to strike me as somewhat unsettling that once I got into Wednesday, the second half sort of passed faster than the days before. Now at age 52 1/2, I simply can't help noticing how scarily fast time runs from Monday through Sunday. Every single Wednesday morning, I look at my husband and comment with a sigh, "You believe it, it's garbage day again?!" A week is just nothing anymore, and even a month zips by at exponentially increasing speed. What the heck??? A year slips by just like that and then a new one followed by just another one. Whenever I catch myself reminiscing as I look back to whatever we were doing in the past, I usually end up both shocked and reluctant to believe that it has actually only been 6, 7 or 8 rather than the firmly assumed 2, 3 or 4 years. I truly wonder what it will be like in another ten, twenty or maybe even thirty years from now? At bedtime, my significant other regularly complains, "What the hell, didn't we just get out of bed?" Yes, we did, but you see, those 15 hours in between getting up and lying down again are strangely no longer lasting their original length compared to what it felt like when I was only 15 or 20 years old. As much as I still despise sleepless nights, at least, they have clearly lost their bite, so to speak. After all, what's another 6 to 8 hours to wait out, right? All kidding aside, most faithfully, I keep trying to consciously grasp the moment and so stay fully focused in the Here and Now, but I find it harder and harder to accept the truth which is I am virtually losing my grip on either one. As a matter of fact, I have made the rather startling observation that my future, or rather what is left of it, is becoming noticeably shorter perspective- wise while my past seems to be stretching and spreading out further more. I know I can't and won't ever win that insane race against time as first and foremost, I am condemned to actually witness my very own gradual decay firsthand. I would definitely be lying if I said I liked the nature of that unstoppable transformational process because I really don't. Believe me, it is less the fact that I am aging but rather the circumstance that I am basically running out of time altogether. - I love watching my felines eat, play, rest and interact with each other as well as with us, even though, I seriously can't help but think, 'Can it be that they feel their old age, too?' How do animals in general perceive time if at all? I would love to find out if they sense any difference apart from naturally occurring physical wear and tear which slows them down very much like us humans? Well, as I am contemplating this very thought, the awareness is pushing through that it is long gone already and that the Now is consequently nothing but an illusion. Inarguably, time is a serious force to be reckoned with and thus very well existent as it explicitly demonstrates its power pointing directly at all our mortality, even if, solely on a physical plane. Anywhere else, wherever that may be, time, as we know it, is de facto absent which ultimately grants our souls to last forever as immortal entities.