musings on time

As I near 30, time is speeding up. It's factual. I can nearly measure to what degree it's happening. Earlier parts of my life seem like another life entirely, while the past week has gone by in a blur. So I suppose it's really more truthful to say that time is warping, and no longer seems linear. Memories from childhood can seem like yesterday while six months ago seems to be years away. I heard my elder family members talk about this when I was a kid, and thought to myself, "You're a moron, time is always the same...it's time, it can't change." Ha! I was absolutely wrong. Time changes as your life does. Time warps and bends constantly to create the oddity of forgetting what you had for breakfast while remembering obscure moments from many many years past. Time also speeds up and slows down according to how much something is enjoyable or un-enjoyable. Even stranger is the fact that we often share similar experiences of how and when time distorts. Examples of this would include trips to the DMV. Time at the DMV passes by so slowly that one visit can seem to last days: days during which you never sleep or eat. Conversely, if something is incredible, it's nearly over before it began. Examples of this might include a trip to Costa Rica, or eating the most fabulous steak of your life. Those disappear faster than the flavor from a slice of fruit stripe gum. So what's a person to do, to try to live in the now when time distortion robs us of the most wonderful times of our lives? What would it take to turn time into a variable that each individual could control in his or her own life? What if you could trick yourself into valuing all situations equally? Maybe time would pass at a steady rate. If that were true, then maybe time could be controlled even further by completely believing that you enjoy the DMV, and furthermore, dislike tropical locations such as Costa Rica. What would be the result of an experiment on this? Would you create within yourself a chasm to divide one part of yourself from another? To tell one part of yourself you dislike swimming in warm tropical waters, while knowing entirely in the other that it is your favorite feeling? Would you be able to turn painful experiences such as visits to the DMV, or even larger more meaningful ones, into more enjoyable scenarios, or at the least, less painful ones? Let's assume that you could use these tools of controlled time dilation in your favor to savor the good times and breeze easily through the hard ones. What would be the results? Would you be the person you are right now if you could have done that? I wouldn't. But some part of me still desires to hold onto good times. I suppose that's only human.