Time

Time flies when you're having fun, so the old saying goes. But time also flies when you're having a miserable time, when you're not doing anything great, or if life is so-so, or if you're just doing everyday things and achieving nothing in particular. That's one thing about time that will never change: it flies.

It's hard to believe that it's already the end of November. Another month and this year will be over, and before you know it the new year will be upon us, hurtling us towards middle age and then old age and wrinkles and senility and gray hair and eventually death. Scary, isn't it?

A few days ago I played a game on Facebook called Social Interview where FB asked me 21 random questions. One of the questions was "Have you learned anything this year?" I didn't have any answer to it. I didn't learn anything new, I didn't learn how to play the guitar (which I've tried but I'm hopeless at), didn't learn how to dance, or paint, or play chess better. I didn't learn how to be a better person, how to communicate better with others, how to improve my social skills, or how to be more forgiving and not hold any grudges. I didn't learn anything new about the world around me, I didn't read about Greek mythology which I find quite fascinating but about which I know very little. I started reading Ramayana but other books interfered and I am still somewhere on the first one hundred pages. I didn't finish reading The Bible, didn't even finish reading my Daily Bread. To cut a long story short: I was lazy.

If there's anything I hate, it's laziness. I hate people who are inefficient and unproductive and incompetent. More than that, I hate people who don't try. And here I am being everything I hated, being everything I detested. What is the world coming to? Am I spiralling down towards complete inefficiency and slowly turning into a lazy lout? Is my life without purpose, without any goals, am I just drifting along?

This new year I wrote that I wouldn't be making any New Year resolutions. Because I never keep them. And so I didn't, and here I am now at the tail end of the year, doing exactly the same thing I did eleven months ago, my daily routine the same as ever. Would I be better off if I had made some resolutions when the year began? Would I have made some changes in my life if I had promised to do so? Maybe yes. Resolutions are like goals, like reminders, you need to work towards achieving them. They fill your life with purpose, with objectives, and give you a sense of fulfillment when you keep them. And in some way keep you from being lazy.

Have you ever noticed how one day goes so slowly but the months and the years just fly by? Everyday we go to work hoping the month would end so we can get paid, and one fine morning we wake up and realise that a whole year had gone by waiting for the month-end. Every new year I'd always write how I wished it would be a better year, a more productive and more fruitful year, but somehow somewhere along the way I guess I must have lost track because I always end up in the same spot when the last day of the year rolled around.

So will I be making resolutions next year? I don't know, maybe I will, only time will tell.