Tick Tock, Tick Tock

How many of us keep wondering where the time has gone. So many times, one wonders how the days, months, even years seem to just fly by. If you have never or even rarely experienced this feeling, you are a few of the lucky ones.

This is my average weekday :- I wake up with the sound of my son waking up. We are late risers, so anywhere between 8 and 9 am. Then, we go into our morning routine - Breakfast for him, coffee for us, breakfast for us, newspapers, bath time for him, showers for us, trying to get out acts together. Before we know it, its past noon and then we head to work, (we are the lucky ones, no fixed schedules for work!) with the baby in tow. Our commute is a minimum of two and a half hours a day. So, from work we reach home around 7:30 pm. Then baby dinner time, bath time, our dinner, then his bed time. After he sleeps, we both get a few hours of 'couple time' to watch TV or a movie. And maybe, twice a week, we leave the baby with a grandmother and step out of the house for dinner or drinks with friends.

By anyone's standards, we have an easy schedule, YET, time keeps runny by. Why is that?

Of course, there is the cliché, 'Time flies when you're having fun' but that alone doesn't describe this feeling of time slipping away. Its almost as if we have no control over out time. its quite a depressing thought, if one dwells upon it. My personal opinion is that we, as a race, have made our lives, not only complex and time consuming but also unpleasant. Lets try to think of how people, our grandfathers spent their time, some 50 years ago. Of course, there were the same wake up routines, going to work, minus the commutes. Evenings were quieter. One spent quality time with one another. There was the radio and one had to find more meaningful types of entertainment. Although, televisions were there but there were one to three channels, with limited timings. Most people would head over to the neighbours house or go for a stroll in the neighbourhood. If one had a car, one would go for a short leisurely drive. There were no distractions of the phones ringing off the hook, cellphones, pagers, texts, BBM's, emails, etc.

There is a new term I heard today - Nomophobia. I am sure many of us have this phobia. Its the fear of losing your mobile.

Why have we created so many devices to be in touch yet no one knows what's happening next door?
We are constantly talking yet never listening. I recently met with a couple of 16 year olds who were at a sleepover. All night these girls were updating their Facebook, Twitter and BBM accounts and texting other friends. I know I am old fashioned but where is the quality time? Shouldn't they have been chatting with each other, or are they always in touch and when they get together, they have nothing to say to each other?

There was a time when eating out or even going out was a treat but today there are so many options for so many budgets that one is constantly eating out, meeting for drinks, coffee, tea lattes! There are no special occasions left. Mothers aren't even cooking as much as they used to. Children don't even ask for their favourite meals to be cooked at home, they want to order in, or go out. All this is causing time to fly by.   'No time to stop and smell the roses', as the saying goes.

Do we always need to be on the go? Should we not all relax a bit and try to catch our breaths. Maybe we need to switch off the television a few nights a week and just truly spend time together. When we remember how our evenings have been spent and they don't all seem blurred together, maybe time won't fly by, as much.

How do you think we can get time from just flying past us? Please tell me what you think.