All This Time We Were Waiting for Each Other

I should probably be lying on your couch before admitting the following, but here it goes: I have a recurring dream. One that has graced my sleep at the start of every summer vacation since I can remember. The new school year has started. I have a new teacher, who, for lack of a better word, is a kook. Our classroom is in the middle of nowhere. My classmates do not recognize me but recognize one another. I am overcome by a feeling of loneliness and emptiness. I've wasted my summer and it's back to the grind. And sometime during the summer-adventure-sharing-circle, I wake up in a cold sweat and spend the next couple minutes convincing myself that my vacation has just begun. That I still have months to do whatever it is that makes me "worthy" of having a summer vacation in the first place.

Today marks four months since the start of my summer. Still, as I sit here blinded by the light at the end of the tunnel, I feel overwhelmed by a seemingly never ending set of errands. Kind of like no matter how early you start studying for an exam, you still find yourself cramming the night before (well, that's how it is for me at least). Part of me can't believe that four months have flown by already. There is so much I had planned (and failed) to accomplish -- trying my hand at a short story, rekindling my love-hate relationship with the Steinway, dabbling in a new dance form. But when I think about what I do have to show for my summer (an experimental tech blog, a taking to nature, an eye-opening voyage, a room renovation, and a deep appreciation for relaxation), the four months seem like years.

When I came home for a couple days in the spring, I spent one evening with a family friend who is practically family. He has watched my brother and me grow up, and my parents can say the same about his daughter. If I had to approximate, I would say he used to see me at least once a day before I moved to Philadelphia. During this visit, he commented that to him, it seemed that my four years in college had just flown by. I feel like it was just yesterday we saw you off. Then, as with most of our conversations, this one segued into something a bit more philosophical. Did it seem like that to you? He asked. Did the four years just fly by while you were at college? I answered that quite frankly, no, they hadn't. While I'm disappointed that the college phase of my life is over, I certainly cannot say that it passed by in a flash. I had too many experiences, grew and changed in too many ways, met too many people for the time to be telescoped. For my family friend, however, the four years had been business as usual. The same routine. Time had just, well, passed.

If you ask me, human perception of time is one of the biggest mysteries of life. In fact, there is no widely accepted theory for the way in which our brains keep track of time. But somehow, boring or difficult tasks seem to take exorbitant amounts of time while time flies when you're "having fun." Deeply moving or emotional experiences always seem to have occurred "just yesterday." My grandfather's death and my summer study abroad, for example.

Psychologists suggest that because humans find it difficult to understand the passage of time, they link it to something they do understand -- the events in their lives. When events are far and few between, it seems that little to no time has passed. Studies on the subject also help us understand how we can train our brains to understand the passing of time: thinking back to a year of unresolved New Year's resolutions poses the illusion that time has flown, but thinking back to events that were experienced and goals that were attained puts the time and year back into perspective.

On several occasions, I have found myself wishing I could freeze time. Periods of my life where things were going my way or I felt inexplicably happy. Moments that, if I believed in the word, I would call "perfect." I want this moment to last forever, or maybe just longer than a moment. I've also wished I could press a fast forward or rewind button on my life's remote. In a nerdy way, I find it "cool" that nobody knows exactly how the brain understands time. But I am not delusional; I know that (sadly), freezing or traveling time is impossible.

This summer vacation has been the first during which I have had no longstanding commitments. From arts camps to sports camps, camp counseling to tutoring, serving ice cream to interning, rehearsing to performing, there has never been a summer where someone hasn't been on my case (and this someone was usually me; I am my most harsh taskmaster).

Though it saddens me that this is quite possibly my last summer vacation ever, I couldn't be happier with the way I spent it. There is a difference between being busy and being active. A difference between passing time and killing time. Call me Goldilocks, but now that I think about it, the passage of my time this summer was just right.