By Lee Scott
It has already begun. The television stations have started their “Look back at 2015” segments. They show the people who have died, married, divorced and remarried. They show us the sport’s victories and defeats. All the important events of the year are crammed into a thirty minute show. Then there are the newspaper articles outlining the 2015 political missteps and social changes. And yet, as I look at these shows and read the articles, I have to ask these questions. Where did the year go? Wasn’t it just New Years Day? Weren’t we just making predictions for 2015? How could 2015 be slipping away so quickly when it took me three months to stop writing 2014 in my checkbook? My mother warned me about this phenomenon. She said, the older you get the faster time goes by. She was right. My internal clock has been speeding up for years. As a child it seemed like the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas took forever. Now, it goes by in the blink of an eye.
My friend Cheryl recently posted a picture on Facebook of herself, her husband and her college bound granddaughter. “Morgan?” I wrote in my post. “How could that be Morgan?” I remember when Cheryl’s daughter was pregnant. Was that twenty years ago? I recall the pictures Cheryl would show me of Morgan growing up, but a college freshman already. It seemed unreal.
It was because of this time issue that I started writing an annual Christmas Letter. It was about ten years ago and I wanted to prove to myself that the year had actually gone by quickly for a reason. Work, family, vacations and other obligations filled my days. Soon the days turned into months and before I knew it, the year had ended. My Christmas Letter reminds me that the months did fly, but they were filled with
wonderful memories.
Soon we will be inundated with segments on predictions and New Year Resolutions for 2016. Advertisements for gyms and diet classes to help us with our bodies in 2016 will be rampant and we will be planning for the next year. But right now, when the last days of the year are slipping by, I am going to try to slow down time a little bit and just savor the remainder of 2015.
