Is the world going faster?

Gee! Can you believe it? It’s going to be Monday tomorrow! (or already Monday depending on when you read this) Like a flash, the weekend is over. And for those of us who are in the slavery working world, we know what that means… Sunday night depression with imminent Monday blues. But hey… look at the calendar, besides being Monday tomorrow, it also shows that we are already in mid of April. Soon, half of the year will be gone and some of us will actually have to sit down and reflect on what we have achieved in the first half of the year.

Are you one of many who thinks time seems to pass quickly as we journey longer and longer in life? Did the last few years sort of run past you without you knowing it? Do you still remember your younger days? When a day seems to have lots to offer, a week is rather eventful, a month is a long journey and a year… seems like eternity… well… almost eternity.

But things have changed isn’t it? Living in this modern era, 24 hours is certainly not enough to make up a day. Ahjohn left a comment in one of my entry saying how he fails to find the 25th hour in a day. But honestly, when we have that 25th hour, will it be enough? We always seem to run out of time now, always fail to find time to do anything. Weekdays are too short t complete our assignments and weekends are too short to take a breather. Time… seems to just keep accelerating.

How so? Have you ever sat down and think why time seems to be going faster and faster? Quite some time ago, someone told me that time to a child seems slower. This is because they have no deadlines to meet, lesser things to accomplish. We, as adults or coming into adulthood, have so much in our hands, that we always need time to accomplish them. So it’s a case of having too much to do… is it true?

I spoke to a few children to find out more, and I found out that the child-finds-time-slower notion is nothing but a myth. A few of those who are under the age of 10 told me that they don’t have enough time to finish off their homework. After homework, there’re piano classes and tuition classes. Having done all that, children nowadays needs more time to complete a particular computer games. Some of them wish for more time so that they can complete more ‘levels’ in a game. They may not have deadlines, but they certainly have a lot to accomplish. Time to them is still short, just in a different perspective.

I recalled someone telling me about this book called “McWorld”. No idea who wrote it but it’s about how we are trying to beat time in almost everything. It talks about how we are trying to make the world goes faster by applying the “fast food” methodology of McD in our lives… turning our globe into McWorld. To a certain extend, it’s true. Don’t you agree?

Day after day, we are striving to make cars go faster, planes fly faster, computers function faster, banking transactions faster, internet connection faster, make our first million faster, retire faster, be a ‘tai-tai’ faster (for girls), etc. With the exception of orgasm for the male species, we want everything to happen fast, don’t we? We just want to get things done fast so that we can move on to the next agenda. Having moved to the next agenda, we rush ourselves to the next and the vicious cycle continues.

Having said that, I do believe that in the midst of this fast moving world, there are some occasions when we do find time crawling. It’s something that’s very rare nowadays. Do you know what it is? Such phenomena can happen anytime, anywhere. It is called… “WAITING”. When one is waiting for something, time seems to take forever, no?

Having said that, when was the last time we have to “wait” for the day to be over? I can’t recall really, we have so much to do… TV, internet, sms-es, shopping malls, blogs, our jobs and many other things. If all things fail… there’s sleep! Almost every single human being lacks sleep nowadays and therefore, sleeping seems to make time accelerates. As soon as you shut your eyes last night, you’re already at your snooze-until-the-cow-comes-home act right?

Anyway, back to waiting… when was the last time you have to wait for your day to be over? First, we don’t want our days to be over, because we want to do so many things. And if we really have to wait… we can always find something to fill our time. The ever convenient sms is a very good way to kill time. Watch a dvd perhaps? Or maybe, drop by As Zewt As It Gets. If you have to wait for your bus or LRT, there are MP3 players and of course, sms again. All these things take away the agony of waiting, and thus takes away the opportunity for us to taste time.

You may say you always have to wait for your next salary. But if the month is shorter, do you think you have enough time to finish off our work? How many late nights do you have to put up?

As the chance of us waiting for stuff slowly depreciating, so goes our opportunity to appreciate the motion of time. Of course, nobody wants to wait for things to happen. Patience is virtue that not many people possess. But ya’ know, the waiting game is the only door out of this fast moving world, so to speak. It is the only opportunity for us to feel the presence of a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year… time basically. Don’t let it slip away from our grasp because time… is in a way… our life! If time keeps going faster, life as they say… will indeed be short.

Is the world going faster? Well, I think it is, simply because we made it faster.

(I posted this to TheStar blog and it was published on 28 July 2006. But they shorten it a lot, and I thought I should share the full version here, and took the liberty to enhance it)