Perhaps It Is Too Early

Perhaps it is too early, for I am only 18. But my age, or rather the speed of aging – already hit me.

Turn back. I see the sun shining on the grass as I run with my dog, being only 7. A flash of light and I am in a locker room, age 12, changing to go skiing with my friends, kids just like me. Another flash of light, a bright one – behind which I cannot see all the years that pass by, and I am in gr. 9. Asking a girl to go out with me. Wait! Where am I now?? Oh. I am now in university. A year of university is almost complete.

Sometimes I think that life is just starting. I am going to complete university and readily enter the workforce where all will be well. I will advance in corporate positions, acquiring skills necessary for success, then leave and start my own business. More importantly, start a family. That is when I will be happy.

Then I think back, and realize that I am almost two decades old. In my lifetime, so many things have changed. Nations fell and nations rose. The Internet has entangled the world in its sticky World Wide Web. What happened to me? I mature so much slower than the world. I have acquired a set of assets in the forms of languages and knowledge, lost a set of assets like innocence, youth and the ability to be amused by the simplest of things. I grew. And now I am 18.

18 x 4 = 72. I lived a quarter of my life before 72 years and it seems like nothing happened! I remember events and I remember many of them, but what do I have to account for these years? What have I done? I do not remember. Perhaps, a part of my life was wasted watching TV. A part wasted on the internet. A part wasted in school. These parts do not seem to add up to 160,000 of hours that I have lived so far.

As I get older, I remember less and less about what I did and what happens to me. It seems like time accelerates. When I was little, I remember how the year 1998 just wouldn’t end for me. I kept asking mommy – is it 1999 yet? Is it? Time crawled. Now I look back and do not realize how 2008 all of a sudden became 2011. I am not afraid of death, probably. I do not believe in fearing death. But I am afraid of the fact that I am accelerating towards it, through my changing perception of time. I am not scared of death but I am scared of the end of life, or rather of the end of life before it becomes meaningful. I am afraid of a waste of potential given to me at birth, the potential to change something.

Friends fade and appear. I left an impact on others just like others have left an impact on me. I am leaving my own trace through life. I cannot see it though. It seems that the trace has just started. Yet, a big part of it is already complete and cannot be returned to.
These thoughts aren’t new. I began being concerned about my age and how quickly I pass through life when I was in gr. 10. I remember that it hit me acutely one night in gr. 10, December 2007. That was a scary night. I woke up, sat up and couldn’t calm down for I have just realized that I am going to die. That moment I realized the finite nature of my earthly existence. Since then, the realization has faded. Yet, on occasion, it comes back crystal clear.

All I have is to hope. To hope that the next part of my life will be more meaningful. That I will have the chance to do more, to have greater importance. To have an answer when someone asks: what have you done?