Enjoy the year before it fades

By Elizabeth Zanker

Someone once said: “Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. … Lately, it doesn’t seem to be working.”

Never was this more apparent to me than when I was looking out my kitchen window the other morning and admiring the remaining summer flora in my backyard. I remember watching as the steam rose off the grass. Everything was still fairly green, but while I stood there clutching my coffee cup with all the care and mindless awareness of someone who, just moments ago, had rolled out of bed, I had an epiphany.

As I’ve gotten older and have more or less become occupied with all it entails [insert vague reference to increasing senioritis here], I’ve come to realize that the years literally have been passing by without my knowledge.

And it’s not just the years – it’s the very months, weeks and days! Everything actually has seemed to be “happening all at once.” As college students, I’m sure we all can vouch for that.

This has led me to a conclusion. It may seem obvious already, but time does not stop for anything. Sure, we all may have experienced the illusion of it stopping, whether it was in the arms of our first love or in our witnessing a tragic accident.

It may have seemed as if those events were frozen in time, but while you and the others involved seemingly remained static, time inexorably moved on.

Priorities are something that come with age, but often, as a result of them, we forget to pay attention to the world around us. This may be the reason for this loss-of-time perception.

Sometimes, we are so wrapped up in what we must do that we walk blindly to class or work without even noticing the very world we are walking through to get there. Our focus is on our destination, and everything else becomes irrelevant. Life becomes increasingly difficult when this happens.

Those flowers and trees that just days ago I was admiring for their enduring beauty – they won’t last. I will be standing in the same place in a couple of weeks, groggy, coffee cup in hand, awash with all that I have to do that day, and everything will have changed color. Then I will look again, and it will be gone.

It’s in this sense that time is merciless. But with one foot always on the threshold of another moment, she is also considerate, and fall is a great example of that.

Things die, but, in dying, provide the means by which another season can come. Life is the same way. Let the moments die away, but don’t forget to take the time to notice them before they go. Like fall and any other season for that matter, they wouldn’t be so beautiful if they were not meant to be noticed.

We, as humans, have the advantage of an endless memory. We can access it anytime, anywhere. So, if you think of it that way, then you really can stop time. Memories are the home videos of the mind. You can press pause anytime you like.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.