Time - what does it mean to you?

It often appears that time passes very quickly. We look back over the weeks, months and even years and wonder how far away certain events now seem. It doesn’t seem so long since we were looking forward to Christmas and yet now it seems so far gone. How quickly life seems to pass us by. Are we standing still and time is passing through us or are we moving forward/changing and it is time which standing still?
Time is indeed precious and yet it is something we cannot hold onto; all we can try to do is hold it in our memories but do we? Perhaps one reason time seems to pass so quickly is that we so easily forget much of what has occurred during the days, weeks and months gone by. Much of life doesn’t seem memorable, so why bother thinking about it? And yet it is the simple ability to forget which means that time itself disappears in as if into a black hole.
If however, we take the time to remember, even the small details, then we fill up absent time and bring it to life and therefore extend it. A problem we have is that we have so many distractions to occupy our thinking mind that we perhaps don’t bother remembering. We have TV, radio, computers, smart phones, books and magazines, not to mention so many after work activities we can absorb ourselves in – why try to remember anything except the major highlights of one’s life? And even then we tend to only remember them in loose detail. Ask yourself this question, “What did I do yesterday?” And try to remember it in as much detail as you can. How much can you remember? Tomorrow might be a fresh memory but what about the days before?
Of course the past is gone, so what’s the point of remembering? So let’s move on. Perhaps only older folk talk about the past more and it’s called reminiscing; for younger people this would be considered a boring pastime. And yet thinking (remembering) is no different than talking, it’s just talking requires the use of voice and hearing, whereas thinking only requires the mind to talk with itself.
With so many things to occupy our time we really don’t need to spend time remembering and bringing out the detail of the past. But this means we lose the time that has passed us by and life becomes shorter or feels like it is speeding up.
What does a person do when they return from a holiday or travel? They bring out the photos, that is if they haven’t already posted them on Facebook or Instagram. These photos represent their memory of the trip and even replace their memory. Who regales others with detailed stories of their travels and exploits these days? Probably very few; instead we quickly flick through the pictures on our phone, eliciting little comment from our friends, or just a thumbs up on Facebook.
Only a few centuries ago the average person could only have a life expectancy of half that of which we have today and yet we could speculate that their time of being was as long as our own today, simply because they had plenty of time to think, contemplate, remember and discuss. Time therefore, might well be not the minutes and hours on the clock but our memory of what we took note of and what we can recall.
We cannot remember time, that’s impossible but we can remember what fills the time, and that is a lot. And yet we choose not to because it seems all too dull, and so we forget it. Therefore all we do is remember odd events in sparse detail – no wonder time goes by so quickly and we grow old so quickly too. Am I just speaking of myself – what’s your view?