Thursday, November 27, 2008

PERCEPTUAL ACCELERATION

As I sit here digesting a magnificent Turkey Dinner, it occurs to me that it seems like only yesterday that it was last Thanksgiving.

Intellectually, I know that there has been a year’s worth of water under the Bridge o’ Life. Emotionally, it seems like mere minutes.

I often say that time flies when you’re having fun, and even when you’re not...and the speed of that flight increases with every passing year. For it is a cruel fact of nature that as one gets older, life seems to speed up.

I call it Elisson’s Law of Proportional Perception. As we age, each year is a smaller fraction of our lifespan; thus, over time, the years seem to shrink, diminishing in apparent length a little bit every trip around the Sun.

It’s a cruel trick of nature. The less time we have left on the planet, the faster it seems to go. When you’re circling the drain, each orbit is more rapid than the one that preceded it...and that drain gets closer and closer.

But enough depressing musing. We’ve had a Big Feed, our collective kishkes are extracting buttloads of tryptophan from all that Turkedelic Protein, and the ladies are already planning the morrow’s shopping expeditions (gaaahhhh). It has been a wonderful day...and had Elder Daughter been here, it would have been perfect.

I hope your Thanksgiving was at least as enjoyable.

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